CAS­TRIES, St. Lu­cia–The Third Re­gion­al Caribbean Growth Fo­rum (CGF) opened on Tues­day with St Lu­cia's Prime Min­is­ter Dr Ken­ny An­tho­ny say­ing it was nec­es­sary for re­gion­al gov­ern­ments to dis­pel the no­tion they were man­ag­ing failed economies.

"I do not sub­scribe to that per­spec­tive. These economies may be bro­ken but I be­lieve we can pick up the pieces.

I be­lieve that our his­tor­i­cal task is to con­cep­tu­al­ize, shape and de­fine an eco­nom­ic mod­el that an­swers to the times and to our needs," An­tho­ny told del­e­gates at­tend­ing the two-day event.

The CGF pro­vides an op­por­tu­ni­ty to dis­cuss a new agen­da for sus­tain­able growth in the Caribbean and al­so pro­vides a plat­form for pri­vate sec­tor and civ­il so­ci­ety to give feed­back on na­tion­al re­forms and help track the im­ple­men­ta­tion of ac­tions need­ed to spur sus­tain­able growth and op­por­tu­ni­ties for all in the Caribbean.

An­tho­ny told the meet­ing it is no se­cret that the glob­al fi­nan­cial cri­sis which start­ed in 2008 has ad­verse­ly im­pact­ed the economies of non-com­mod­i­ty ex­port­ing Caribbean states.

He said the cri­sis ac­cen­tu­at­ed struc­tur­al weak­ness­es with­in those economies as for­eign ex­change in­flows de­creased due to low­er tourism ar­rivals.

"Added to this were high lev­els of un­em­ploy­ment, trig­gered in most in­stances by job loss­es and lim­it­ed ca­pac­i­ty of do­mes­tic firms to ab­sorb new en­trants in the labour mar­ket," he said, adding that "while com­mod­i­ty ex­porters have fared some­what bet­ter, these coun­tries re­main high­ly vul­ner­a­ble to in­ter­na­tion­al price changes."

He told the del­e­gates that in the post fi­nan­cial cri­sis pe­ri­od, even as the economies of the re­gion's ma­jor trad­ing part­ners have be­gun to re­cov­er, all Caribbean coun­tries have ex­pe­ri­enced de­cel­er­at­ed for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment (FDI).

An­tho­ny said of con­cern is the con­cen­tra­tion of the FDI flows in­to tourism and nat­ur­al re­sources that have not as­sist­ed re­gion­al coun­tries in di­ver­si­fy­ing their economies.

"This, cou­pled with de­creas­ing work­ers' re­mit­tances, have ex­ac­er­bat­ed the neg­a­tive im­pact that the fi­nan­cial cri­sis has had on economies and on liveli­hoods.

"In the midst of the glob­al cri­sis, this re­gion has been ex­posed to oth­er de­bil­i­tat­ing shocks.

It has had to con­tend with the col­lapse of some fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions and in oth­ers, fragili­ty em­a­nat­ing from the col­lapse of sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ments in the tourism plant in some states."

He said cog­nizant of the fis­cal chal­lenges and lim­it­ed pol­i­cy op­tions, Caribbean gov­ern­ments have had to im­ple­ment mea­sures to al­le­vi­ate this cri­sis.

"Such ef­forts would have been fu­tile had it not been for the tech­ni­cal and fi­nan­cial sup­port pro­vid­ed by the mul­ti­lat­er­al com­mu­ni­ty to our re­gion."

Prime Min­is­ter An­tho­ny said the launch­ing of the Fo­rum three years ago ini­ti­at­ed di­a­logue be­tween rep­re­sen­ta­tives from busi­ness as­so­ci­a­tions, civ­il so­ci­ety or­ga­ni­za­tions, gov­ern­ment, pri­vate sec­tor, and in­ter­na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment agen­cies on growth and de­vel­op­ment in the re­gion.

He said 12 coun­tries have launched their na­tion­al chap­ters, in­clud­ing; An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, The Ba­hamas, Be­lize, Grena­da, Do­mini­ca, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Ja­maica, Saint Kitts and Nevis Saint Vin­cent and the Grenadines, Suri­name, T&T and St. Lu­cia. (CMC)