Caribbean governments and peoples need to heed the solid economic advice being offered by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). It is a sure means of the region being able to come out of the negative impact that COVID-19 has had, and the existential threat being posed by climate change.
The imperative came from ECLAC Executive Secretary Jose Manuel Salazar Xirinachs at last Friday’s 21st Monitoring Committee meeting of the Caribbean Development and Co-operation Committee (CDCC).
The programmatic outline of Salazar Xirinachs is not new; it is directed at Caribbean governments seeking to boost sluggish growth in foreign direct investment in tourism, green energy, digital technologies and agriculture.
“The sub-region needs to build a strategy that upgrades and diversifies these sectors to enhance their capacity for integration into global value chains, substituting for imports where economies of scale and efficiencies permit,” advised Salazar Xirinachs.
To advance the change needed, Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley and United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres “have invested their considerable influence and leadership in promoting global consideration of how we reform the debt restructuring architecture,” Salazar Xirinachs noted.
The comments and advice are given in the Caribbean reality of a fall-away in the much-needed foreign investment and borrowing; the export of vital foreign currency needed here at home; and growth in the debt burden, which, according to ECLAC, averages 75 per cent of the gross domestic product of the region. That is compounded in T&T by the purchase of foreign food supplies which now annually amount to the annual average sum of US$5 billion.
At the conference, the Foreign Minister of Suriname Albert Ramdin, who is also CDCC chairman, advised regional governments to focus their foreign currency borrowing on productive investment, rather than other forms of expenditure which do not derive returns to repay the debt.
ELAC’s suggestions concerning developing and expanding the economies and stabilising the region also relate to the other major problem haunting parts of the region, runaway and very violent crime splurges. Youth unemployment averaging 25 per cent in several Caribbean countries is said to be a contributing factor to the social plague, Salazar Xirinachs noted.
The above economic planning advice given by the ECLAC official requires large quantities of political will. The imperatives for change are being driven by forces which have already impacted, and are mounting to arrive again at the confluence of the Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean, all joined into and washing the islands and continental lands which make up the Caribbean.
Finding and implementing solutions to new problems compounding old ones, and the sense of a closing and unrelenting time frame to take action must be confronted. The transformation of the present reality in which the people of the English-speaking Caribbean live cannot be ignored; it must not be left to another generation.
The consequences of living in the past are bearing down on our Caribbean leaders, and questions are being rightfully asked about whether they are up to the task of dynamic and transformative action.