An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter
an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Pro­fes­sor Comp­ton Bourne opened with un­mis­tak­able clar­i­ty, cut­ting through the noise to re­mind Caribbean busi­ness lead­ers that while glob­al pol­i­tics swing wild­ly, it is eco­nom­ic pow­er, not diplo­mat­ic the­atre, that ul­ti­mate­ly shapes the world.
He warned that Caribbean gov­ern­ments and busi­ness­es risk be­ing dis­tract­ed by shift­ing po­lit­i­cal dra­mas, while miss­ing the struc­tur­al eco­nom­ic chal­lenges that will ul­ti­mate­ly make or break the re­gion’s trade fu­ture.  

Bourne, for­mer Pres­i­dent of the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank and cur­rent­ly Guyana’s Am­bas­sador to Brazil, said po­lit­i­cal waves are tem­po­rary dis­rup­tions; eco­nom­ic forces are the deep cur­rents. Even Wash­ing­ton, he ar­gued, bends when its own bot­tom line starts to bleed, cit­ing the Unit­ed States’ tar­iff flip-flop to­ward Brazil un­der Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump.
He was speak­ing in Guyana late last week about the chal­lenges of Cari­com in­tra-re­gion­al and ex­ter­nal trade in the cur­rent glob­al geopo­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic land­scape.

 
Tourism’s wake-up call

Bourne’s tough­est as­sess­ment tar­get­ed tourism, the Caribbean’s flag­ship ex­port, and in his view, one of its most com­pla­cent. He said the re­gion has been los­ing ground in the com­pe­ti­tion for years, while des­ti­na­tions like the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic and Puer­to Ri­co sprint ahead with new ho­tels, up­grad­ed in­fra­struc­ture, ex­pand­ed prod­uct of­fer­ings and vis­i­tor ex­pe­ri­ences built around mod­ern ex­pec­ta­tions. Ja­maica has stayed in the race, but most oth­er Cari­com states have not.

Adding to the prob­lem, soar­ing tax­es on air trav­el and ho­tel stays are suf­fo­cat­ing de­mand, es­pe­cial­ly for in­tra-Caribbean trav­el. Bourne crit­i­cised gov­ern­ments for treat­ing tourism de­mand as if it were im­mune to price sen­si­tiv­i­ty, while vis­i­tors sim­ply choose more af­ford­able des­ti­na­tions.

He ar­gued that the re­gion can­not keep sell­ing yes­ter­day’s ver­sion of par­adise. Pri­vate op­er­a­tors must raise ser­vice qual­i­ty and in­no­vate, and gov­ern­ments must fix out­dat­ed fis­cal ap­proach­es if they hope to re­gain lost ground.

Bourne high­light­ed Guyana as a coun­try with mas­sive eco-tourism po­ten­tial, but one still lack­ing ba­sics like af­ford­able in­ter­nal trav­el, mid-jour­ney rest stops and mul­ti­lin­gual tour guides—a se­ri­ous bar­ri­er for trav­ellers from Latin Amer­i­ca and Eu­rope. He in­sist­ed that the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean must break its unilin­gual habits and em­brace for­eign-lan­guage train­ing as part of its com­pet­i­tive strat­e­gy.

Ser­vices be­yond beach­es

Mov­ing be­yond tourism, Bourne sees Caribbean ser­vices, es­pe­cial­ly en­ter­tain­ment and sports, as an un­tapped gold­mine. But he said the re­gion is trapped in an out­dat­ed mod­el, bet­ting every­thing on phys­i­cal venues and hop­ing con­sumers will fly in. That mind­set, he ar­gued, keeps scale small, rev­enues capped and glob­al reach im­pos­si­ble.

The fu­ture is dig­i­tal and vir­tu­al, and the Caribbean is not ready, he ar­gued. To com­pete in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, the re­gion must de­liv­er con­sis­tent qual­i­ty, start events on time, meet con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tions and in­vest in tech­nol­o­gy ca­pa­ble of stream­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing con­tent to glob­al au­di­ences. Bourne warned that on­line con­sumers are un­for­giv­ing if a livestream be­gins late or qual­i­ty drops; the au­di­ence moves on im­me­di­ate­ly.

He be­lieves these in­dus­tries could ri­val tourism as ma­jor ex­port earn­ers, but on­ly if the re­gion pro­fes­sion­alis­es op­er­a­tions, strength­ens in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty pro­tec­tion and builds re­al dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture. Un­til then, world-class tal­ent will re­main shack­led by out­dat­ed sys­tems.

Trade with­out il­lu­sions

On mer­chan­dise trade, Bourne said re­gion­al am­bi­tions to di­ver­si­fy in­to Latin Amer­i­ca and Africa must be ground­ed in op­er­a­tional re­al­i­ty. Trans­port links are weak, lo­gis­tics costs are high, and sup­ply chains are not yet struc­tured to sup­port large-scale ex­port pen­e­tra­tion. Niche mar­kets, not mass mar­kets, are where Cari­com can win, and past suc­cess­es prove it: rice from Guyana in­to Brazil, Caribbean rum in­to North Amer­i­ca and Eu­rope and lo­cal beer in­to In­dia.

But he stressed that sus­tain­able growth re­quires stronger gov­ern­ment-busi­ness col­lab­o­ra­tion, some­thing the re­gion has strug­gled with for decades. Reg­u­la­to­ry bar­ri­ers abroad must be ne­go­ti­at­ed away through ac­tive diplo­ma­cy, and ex­porters must build re­li­able dis­trib­u­tor re­la­tion­ships and lever­age di­as­po­ra net­works.

Trade bar­ri­ers block growth

Cari­com’s trade am­bi­tions con­tin­ue to clash with en­trenched re­gion­al ob­sta­cles, ac­cord­ing to in­dus­try lead­ers. Ram­say Ali, Pres­i­dent of the Caribbean Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (CMA) and CEO of Ster­ling Prod­ucts Lim­it­ed, high­light­ed per­sis­tent hur­dles that are stalling progress, par­tic­u­lar­ly around har­monised food im­port rules and the 40-per­cent Com­mon Ex­ter­nal Tar­iff (CET).

Ali ex­plained that when com­pa­nies seek to im­port raw ma­te­ri­als from out­side the re­gion, ob­jec­tions are of­ten filed on the grounds that a sup­pli­er ex­ists in a mem­ber state. The re­sult is a drawn-out, cost­ly process that can leave busi­ness­es with­out crit­i­cal in­puts for weeks or months.

“Some­times you run out of raw ma­te­ri­als and get caught in a back-and-forth sim­ply be­cause of who is here,” he said, stress­ing that small­er com­pa­nies of­ten lack the re­sources to fund teams of ex­perts to nav­i­gate the ap­provals.

The CMA pres­i­dent al­so raised con­cerns about non-tar­iff bar­ri­ers, in­clud­ing dif­fer­ing in­spec­tion re­quire­ments across mem­ber states that com­pli­cate ex­ports.  

De­spite re­peat­ed ef­forts over the years, he said, there has been lit­tle progress in re­solv­ing these is­sues. Adding to the frus­tra­tion, some Cari­com gov­ern­ments have al­lowed ex­tra-re­gion­al im­ports to by­pass the CET, un­der­min­ing lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers who have in­vest­ed heav­i­ly to pro­duce iden­ti­cal prod­ucts.

“There is no progress be­ing made, and small­er busi­ness­es are be­ing left to pick up the pieces,” Ali said. He re­vealed that Ster­ling Prod­ucts alone has ten pend­ing court cas­es in the re­gion re­lat­ed to such vi­o­la­tions, and that hun­dreds more are tied up across Cari­com.

Econ­o­mist and trade ex­pert Carl Greenidge weighed in, de­fend­ing tech­ni­cal staff, but crit­i­cis­ing the po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship that gov­erns re­gion­al trade de­ci­sions.

“Coun­cil for Trade and Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment (Cot­ed) is a col­lec­tion of gov­ern­ment min­is­ters and is prob­a­bly the least ef­fec­tive of all Cari­com’s min­is­te­r­i­al bod­ies,” said Greenidge, a for­mer Guyana for­eign af­fairs and trade min­is­ter.

He ar­gued that in­di­vid­ual mem­ber states of­ten over­ride col­lec­tive rules, un­der­min­ing mar­ket pro­tec­tion and frus­trat­ing ex­porters.

“You can­not pur­sue a col­lec­tive course if each state ex­er­cis­es its right to break the rules they have col­lec­tive­ly agreed on,” he said, urg­ing pri­vate-sec­tor ac­tors to ac­tive­ly par­tic­i­pate in Cari­com’s trade de­ci­sion-mak­ing process­es to pro­tect their in­ter­ests.

The warn­ings from both Ali and Greenidge un­der­score a re­cur­ring theme for Caribbean trade: the re­gion’s po­ten­tial re­mains high, but out­dat­ed process­es, in­con­sis­tent en­force­ment, and lack of co­or­di­na­tion con­tin­ue to slow progress, leav­ing busi­ness­es nav­i­gat­ing a maze of reg­u­la­tions while com­peti­tors abroad move ahead.

Al­so speak­ing was Cari­com Sin­gle Mar­ket spe­cial­ist Neville Bis­sem­ber, who high­light­ed that the Cot­ed frame­work al­lows room for ne­go­ti­at­ing medi­um- to long-term ex­emp­tions. The for­mer as­sis­tant gen­er­al coun­sel at Cari­com not­ed that, de­spite crit­i­cisms, the mech­a­nism is func­tion­ing.

Re­flect­ing on the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice rul­ing in the Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd case, which chal­lenged Guyana’s uni­lat­er­al CET waiv­er on ex­tra-re­gion­al ce­ment, Bis­sem­ber ex­plained that the court em­pha­sised the need to fol­low es­tab­lished rules. He added that the cen­tral con­sid­er­a­tions in such cas­es are whether a mem­ber state can meet both the re­quired quan­ti­ty and qual­i­ty of the prod­uct.