Chamber told to make most of project funding

Predicting an even more challenging future ahead for the European economy, Director of International Trade {{more}} in the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Jonathan Webber, has called on Chamber partners to make the most of almost one million Euros in funding.

“There are tough days ahead in Europe and maybe worldwide. I have a suspicion that funding is going to become more difficult to obtain, so it’s up to us to take this and really run with it and make it work.”

Webber was speaking at a cocktail on Wednesday, July 28, at Government House, to mark the end of a two-day workshop which took place here last Monday, July 26, and Tuesday 27 and was hosted by this country’s Chamber of Industry and Commerce.

His chamber was one of five at the workshop that included representatives from St. Lucia, St. Kitts, and Italy.

The workshop is part of a 19-month project aimed at the development of East Caribbean Business Organizations and is expected to be completed in September 2011.

The project received 800,000 Euros from the European Union.

Webber said that the funding was a very significant amount of money, which showed that the EU had faith in the chambers to use the money wisely, with a view to developing their skills so that their economies can grow.

“This particular project is designed primarily to increase capacity of the intermediary organizations. I believe that the EU’s thinking is that in training the chambers, they could pass the information to the private sector.”

“We’ve been discussing cluster work, penetrating European markets, issues like intellectual property, packaging, corporate social responsibility and environmental things. All of these things are going to impact on the way the private sector works,” Webber said.

Webber highlighted agriculture, and ‘health and well being’ tourism as strong areas which need to be further explored by the region.

Webber said that he does not believe that the economic future is gloomy as is often said, but rather challenging.

He said that a project like the one that the partners are involved in could help the region, the chambers, and the private sector to build opportunities for themselves in the face of dwindling assistance from international bodies, especially in Europe.

“It’s a hard time in Europe and certainly a hard time in the United Kingdom, where as you are aware, we had a fairly recent election. We have a coalition government in power and they have made it very clear in their recent budget that there’s going to be substantially very large cuts in services.

“That is going to impact right across the economy and that’s going to impact on our purchasing power, spending power, and what we buy and sell around the world.” (JJ)