End of the post colonial economy: The Caribbean’s greatest challenge

They did not go to Washington “hankering after a nostalgic past”, nor as a people without hope. Rather, the leaders of the Caribbean Community (Caricom) went in the belief that the Conference on the Caribbean would mark “The beginning of a fresh, more productive phase in the relations between Caricom and the United States of America”.{{more}}

So stated Caricom’s lead prime minister on Trade and the Caricom Single Market and Economy (CSME), Prime Minister of Barbados Owen Arthur.

In his keynote address to the Opening Plenary for the Conference on the Caribbean held last week in Washington D.C., Arthur declared that the greatest challenge confronting the Caribbean today is to find a way to address what is “Essentially the end of the post colonial economy”.

The prime minister’s address, which lasted 28 minutes, gave a comprehensive, hard hitting overview of the challenges facing a small island Caribbean state in today’s globalized world, and the efforts being made by Caricom member states to modernize their economies.

The dismantling of the region’s long standing trade arrangements for sugar, bananas, rum and rice with the European Union, Arthur said, marked an “Irrevocable turning point in the economic history of our region”.

In addition, he stated, preferential trade agreements with Europe, the United States and Canada have significantly been eroded by the “sheer proliferation of bilateral and sub-regional trade pacts all across the world, which lock in for participating countries greater market benefits than are available to us under our so called preferential arrangements”.

This change in status of our preferential trade arrangements, Arthur said, “are the most vivid and most tangible manifestation of the changed global circumstances in which we now operate”.

The Barbadian prime minister also mentioned the decline in multilateral development finance, and development donor assistance to our region as being equally important realities with which Caribbean nations are now faced.

The war on terrorism and its cost implications, a “new and welcome” focus on Africa, which has diverted funds which would have previously been earmarked for the Caribbean, and the “phenomenal growth of China, India and the emerging Asian giants,” are factors that have made circumstances in the region even more challenging.

The special case of countries like St. Vincent and the Grenadines, which were until recently, “substantial banana producers”, was highlighted. Prime Minister Arthur said that such member states need to make the transition to become service exporters, but “their economies are not yet in the jet age”.

Lashing out, Arthur declared, “Their quest for financial resources to build international airports are not being respected nor addressed by the international financial community. I need to say here in Washington, that Cuba, Venezuela and China are carrying the burden of these countries’ financial needs. Most Caribbean economies can achieve rapid development and address deep seated problems relating to poverty and unemployment by becoming exporters of high quality services.”

Arthur expressed the view that the competitive advantage of our 21st century Caribbean lies in the direction of knowledge based, skill intensive industries. However, he lamented, there are still too many instances where the infrastructural and institutional arrangements to bring our societies into the information age have not been made.

The well-respected Caribbean leader did not end without charting the way forward for the region. He advised that even though “We have inherited societies infested with great inequalities,” we have to “create and sustain open rather than closed systems at both the social and economic levels to generate new opportunities … and bring the marginalized into the mainstream of social and economic life.”

This he said, could be done by reorienting our production systems away from dependence on trade preferences; focusing on exploiting areas of specialization for which there is demand; investing in education and training to give the region an edge; investing in environmental protection and the health and welfare of the people; reorienting our fiscal systems away from a dependence on taxes on trade, and creating and sustaining an enterprise culture.

Arthur emphasized that the State “cannot retreat, but has to become more entrepreneurial and develop public/private partnerships to ensure that the priority social developments take place. The State too, must make the investment in the institutional arrangements and infrastructure to bring our countries into information age, he said.

He advised the hundreds present at the forum that the Caribbean Community member countries, have, in varying degrees, already been taking steps, including domestic restructuring, towards developing modern post colonial economies in their respective countries.

The CSME, he said, enhances the prospect of sustainable equitable development in the Caribbean through regional integration. Where the Free Trade area of the Americas (FTAA) has failed, he bragged, the CSME has succeeded with a single economic space which allows the movement of goods, services, skills, capital, and right of establishment among member states. The region is now poised to move towards a framework in which their respective economies function as a single economy, he added.

In closing, Arthur urged the US to join Caricom in “A partnership for progress in this our common Caribbean homeland”.