For­mer Trinidad and To­ba­go fi­nance min­is­ter, Win­ston Dook­er­an, is call­ing for a shift in the Caribbean in­te­gra­tion mod­el in or­der to forge wider con­ver­gence spaces for ap­proach­ing pro­duc­tion, the in­sti­tu­tion­al frame­work and eco­nom­ic fron­tiers.

Dook­er­an, an econ­o­mist and for­mer cen­tral bank gov­er­nor, said the cur­rent in­te­gra­tion mod­el seems lim­it­ed by size, de­sign and in­er­tia.

Dook­er­an was the the fifth pre­sen­ter to par­tic­i­pate in the Keynote Lec­ture Se­ries or­ga­nized by the Unit­ed Na­tions Eco­nom­ic Com­mis­sion for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (ECLAC) to com­mem­o­rate the UN’s re­gion­al or­ga­ni­za­tion’s 75th an­niver­sary.

The lec­ture se­ries is al­so in­tend­ed to in­crease the vis­i­bil­i­ty of the Caribbean sit­u­a­tion and per­spec­tive and con­tribute to sub­re­gion­al think­ing and ac­tion.

In his pre­sen­ta­tion en­ti­tled “Struc­ture and Syn­er­gy in De­vel­op­ment: The Caribbean Set­ting and its Fu­ture,” on Wednes­day night, Dook­er­an, the cur­rent Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al of Eu­clid Uni­ver­si­ty, an­a­lyzed the way in which the struc­ture of the Caribbean econ­o­my is chang­ing in a mul­ti­po­lar world, as well as ex­am­in­ing the “geom­e­try” of the cri­sis prompt­ed by coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic.

He re­ferred to the sub­re­gion’s dif­fi­cul­ties for achiev­ing the Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agen­da for Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment and ad­dressed the lim­i­ta­tions and re­stric­tions that ham­per the Caribbean from ac­cess­ing and tak­ing ad­van­tage of de­vel­op­ment fi­nance.

“The key to tack­ling the de­vel­op­ment chal­lenges fac­ing the Caribbean lies in the strat­e­gy for struc­tur­al change,” Dook­er­an ar­gued, stress­ing that in a post-COVID-19 era, it is crit­i­cal to have “shock ab­sorbers” that can be a buffer against eco­nom­ic shocks – an is­sue that must be part of the agen­da for re­form­ing the in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial ar­chi­tec­ture.

Dook­er­an high­light­ed the role of gov­er­nance, in­sti­tu­tion­al strength­en­ing and the re­de­f­i­n­i­tion of the role of the state for clos­ing the gap be­tween the­o­ry and prac­tice and achiev­ing the de­sired de­vel­op­ment.

He said it is nec­es­sary to de­sign an in­sti­tu­tion­al frame­work for pro­mot­ing “sus­tain­able so­cial eq­ui­ty,” not­ing this in­cludes uni­ver­sal health cov­er­age, guar­an­teed min­i­mum in­come for all, and ro­bust and in­clu­sive com­mu­ni­ty gov­er­nance.

“The time has come for re­set­ting the state and mar­ket roles in the de­vel­op­ment process. A new role for the state, nei­ther con­trol­ling nor fa­cil­i­tat­ing, must make change hap­pen. A new syn­er­gy be­tween the state and the mar­ket – a ‘cat­alyt­ic’ role for the state – must be ex­plored.”

Dook­er­an fur­ther posed the need to pre­pare for the tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vance en­tailed by ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, which in­volves, for ex­am­ple, the dig­i­tal­iza­tion of the econ­o­my and mea­sures to pro­mote tech­ni­cal change in Small and Medi­um-sized En­ter­pris­es (SMEs).

Dur­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion, the promi­nent Trinidad and To­ba­go econ­o­mist de­scribed ECLAC as an in­ter­na­tion­al­ly rec­og­nized “cra­dle of de­vel­op­ment ideas.

“ECLAC has stood firm as an in­sti­tu­tion of dig­ni­ty,” which “has nev­er de­vi­at­ed from the search of the pub­lic good of de­vel­op­ment” and has re­mained loy­al to the mis­sion of seek­ing new ideas for coun­tries’ progress, he said.

In his re­marks, , ECLAC’s Ex­ec­u­tive Sec­re­tary, José Manuel Salazar-Xiri­nachs em­pha­sized that “the Caribbean is as beau­ti­ful as it is vul­ner­a­ble and frag­ile."

“Many Caribbean coun­tries are char­ac­ter­ized by sig­nif­i­cant mul­ti­di­men­sion­al vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties that chal­lenge their path to long-term sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment.”

He said since they are par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble to the im­pacts of cli­mate change, “the sub­re­gion seems stuck in a cy­cle of dis­as­ters, re­cov­ery with low growth, loans, large deficits, and debt that chal­lenge ef­forts to progress to­wards re­silient and sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment.”

In re­sponse to this com­plex sce­nario, Salazar-Xiri­nachs said that Caribbean lead­ers have been unit­ed and par­tic­u­lar­ly vo­cal in glob­al fo­rums, call­ing for re­dou­bling ef­forts to ad­dress cli­mate change and de­liv­er cli­mate jus­tice; seek­ing sup­port to ad­dress nat­ur­al dis­as­ters; and re­form­ing the glob­al fi­nan­cial ar­chi­tec­ture to make it fair­er and more in­clu­sive.

ECLAC said Caribbean diplo­mats have been in­stru­men­tal con­trib­u­tors to ef­forts to re-imag­ine the glob­al eco­nom­ic or­der, he said, men­tion­ing ex­am­ples such as the Bridgetown Ini­tia­tive, led by the Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Amor Mot­t­ley; the Fi­nanc­ing for De­vel­op­ment in the Era of COVID-19 and Be­yond Ini­tia­tive, pro­mot­ed by the Unit­ed Na­tions Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al, An­tónio Guter­res, and co-chaired by the Prime Min­is­ter of Ja­maica; and the Loss and Dam­age Fund, which was cham­pi­oned by the Al­liance of Small Is­land States (AO­SIS) and se­cured un­der the Chair­man­ship of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da dur­ing COP27.

In ad­di­tion, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da will host the Fourth In­ter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence on Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing States (SIDS) and will lead dis­cus­sions to­wards a bold new Pro­gramme of Ac­tion.

Salazar-Xiri­nachs said the cur­rent Pres­i­dent of the 78th ses­sion of the UN Gen­er­al As­sem­bly, Am­bas­sador Den­nis Fran­cis of Trinidad and To­ba­go, has al­so un­der­scored the need to de­fend the cause of Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing States.

Salazar-Xiri­nachs said, “At ECLAC, we are hon­ored to help el­e­vate the Caribbean per­spec­tive and to con­tribute to sub­re­gion­al think­ing and ac­tion on sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment."

SAN­TI­A­GO, Chile, Oct 26, CMC –

Cour­tesy CMC/af/ir/2023