More than 135 re­gion­al mi­cro-small-and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es (MSMEs) re­ceived over US$2.1 mil­lion in fund­ing to boost their busi­ness­es last year, the Caribbean Ex­port De­vel­op­ment Agency (Caribbean Ex­port) has re­vealed in its 2022 an­nu­al re­port.

The re­port out­lined how the re­gion­al trade and in­vest­ment pro­mo­tion agency has fo­cused on a trans­for­ma­tion­al agen­da to build a ‘GREEN­er, SMARTer, and more re­silient Caribbean’ by em­pow­er­ing over 1,000 busi­ness pro­fes­sion­als through 30 in­ter­ven­tions such as train­ing, work­shops, in­vest­ment fo­rums and ac­cess to in­ter­na­tion­al tradeshows.

Caribbean Ex­port’s ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor, De­o­dat Ma­haraj, said he was par­tic­u­lar­ly proud of the agency’s 89 per cent im­ple­men­ta­tion rate which he be­lieved was mak­ing “a re­al dif­fer­ence on the ground” to MSMEs which ac­count for 70 per cent of the re­gion’s gross do­mes­tic prod­uct and 75 per cent of its to­tal em­ploy­ment.

He al­so thanked the Eu­ro­pean Union (EU) for its “long and en­dur­ing” sup­port while re­veal­ing ef­forts to bring more fi­nan­cial part­ners on board such as the CAF-de­vel­op­ment bank of Latin Amer­i­ca and Re­pub­lic Bank.

“We are at a crit­i­cal cross­roads and we have the op­tion of fo­cus­ing on busi­ness as usu­al or ad­vanc­ing a tru­ly trans­for­ma­tion­al agen­da for our re­gion, giv­ing jobs and op­por­tu­ni­ty for our peo­ple… At Caribbean Ex­port we will con­tin­ue to strive for ex­cel­lence and val­ue for mon­ey with a foren­sic fo­cus on re­sults, re­sults, re­sults,” Ma­haraj said.

Caribbean Ex­port not­ed that since 2017, the EU has in­vest­ed over 27.5m eu­ros in grants in­to the re­gion­al pri­vate sec­tor pro­gramme to sup­port the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the CAR­I­FO­RUM-EU Eco­nom­ic Part­ner­ship Agree­ment (EPA) which rep­re­sents around 90 per cent of Caribbean Ex­port’s bud­get.

Dr Lynette Hold­er, chair­man of Caribbean Ex­port De­vel­op­ment Agency al­so not­ed that in 2022, the agency ex­e­cut­ed the Caribbean In­vest­ment Fo­rum, a land­mark event in Port-of-Spain that sig­nalled that the Caribbean is open for busi­ness.

She said the event at­tract­ed over 600 del­e­gates ex­plor­ing the most at­trac­tive in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties in tech­nol­o­gy, agri­cul­ture, re­new­able en­er­gy, and in­no­va­tion.