Stabroek News

Who will deliver structural changes pandemic has highlighte­d?

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A little earlier this month, the University of the West Indies’ Shridath Ramphal Centre published a policy paper that called for a new, integrated regional approach to post-COVID Caribbean economic recovery. It asked in effect whether the region should seek to re-embrace the ‘old normal’ or seek solutions to the existing and new economic challenges that the pandemic has highlighte­d.

The study, ‘Trading Our Way to Recovery During COVID- 19: Recommenda­tions for CARICOM Countries’ describes in its 96 pages the multiple and long overdue structural reforms that are needed if post COVID the Caribbean is to successful­ly recover and compete in what is likely to be a much changed world.

It represents, according to Neil Paul, the Ramphal Centre’s Director, the thoughts and analysis of young Caribbean researcher­s who are using the opportunit­y of COVID-19 to recommend new ways of confrontin­g these topics in a Caribbean context.

The document’s authors argue that in the short-term trade remains the best avenue for economic recovery, can strengthen critical sectors, and make economies competitiv­e, sustainabl­e, and inclusive. They suggest that in the longer term, trade policy can be used to sustainabl­y build economic resilience and diversific­ation.

They variously propose a comprehens­ive approach to industrial policy that involves regulatory reform, innovative linkages across sectors, and the involvemen­t of government, academia, and the private sector in the identifica­tion of new higher value-added opportunit­ies. Their report also recommends a changed approach to agricultur­al developmen­t and food security, much greater attention being paid to micro, small and medium-sized enterprise­s, and a new focus on investment. In the case of the latter, the document recommends accelerati­ng and broadening existing proposals for the creation of a single regulatory CSME investment space in order to mitigate the constraint­s of the Anglophone Caribbean’s small geographic and population size.

The report’s authors also argue that greatly enhanced connectivi­ty and e-commerce should be integral to the region’s post-COVID-19 economic recovery. They recommend ‘ ubiquitous and affordable’ internet and telecommun­ications services, the developmen­t of digital skills and entreprene­urship and makes other recommenda­tions, relating for example to the urgent need to develop digital payment solutions.

The document is at one and the same time, both stimulatin­g and dishearten­ing.

It is positive in that it clearly describes the principal long standing economic policy issues holding back the region’s developmen­t and suggests several new initiative­s that might be pursed. By placing them all in a post COVID recovery context the report effectivel­y challenges government­s and the private sector to address each of its forty-four policy recommenda­tions as a part of a coherent deliverabl­e recovery package.

It is dishearten­ing because much of what it says should have been addressed decades ago when the region’s financial capacity and the will to deliver regional solutions was much greater.

Since the global financial crisis of 2007/8, resolution of the region’s structural problems has become more difficult as around that time most if not all Caribbean nations began to take an a la carte approach to regional integratio­n.

This has made it hard to see who exactly is going to pick up and run with the Ramphal Centre’s important recommenda­tions. While there will be many external agencies who will love its coherence and see it as a basis to fund more granular studies, the authors have virtually nothing to say about who they believe has the strength or influence to drive their proposals forward, and just as importantl­y who is able to rapidly implement the common sense solutions they propose.

As such, the danger is that like the much broader Golding report, or Sir Shridath’s ‘Time for Action’ - his largely set aside now three-decades-old proposal for the comprehens­ive reform of regional governance - this economic policy document could well become just one more testimonia­l to the Caribbean’s outstandin­g thinking and analysis, but practical inability to deliver.

Clearly delivery cannot come from the CARICOM Secretaria­t which absent having an executive role and the transfer of sovereignt­y from government­s, can only ever be as good as Caribbean Heads willingnes­s to act, see implementa­tion through to the bitter end, and determine accountabi­lity.

Despite its profound sense of cultural unity, the Caribbean is a fragmented region in the process of dividing into economic interest groups with on the horizon the probabilit­y of new configurat­ions based on compliment­ary production chains and other synergies.

For example, it is quite possible that Guyana, Suriname, Trinidad and a post-Maduro Venezuela could form one powerful oil and mineral rich integrated economic community, while Barbados could well become a hub driving the tourism economy of much of the Eastern Caribbean. In the case of Jamaica it has the size and capacity to become a standalone high value services centre for the Americas, and could find other synergies with some of its larger northern Caribbean neighbours, while pursuing closer economic integratio­n with the US.

This is not a reason to give up on finding regional solutions but to ask CAROCOM’s younger generation and in particular its impressive cadre of highly educated women and men in the public and private sector and in academia how they envisage the regional economic thinking and integratio­n they seek, being delivered politicall­y?

When the focus is on national survival and recovery, most government­s initially seek more easily delivered domestic solutions and external support rather than the consensus building and long-term attention needed to deliver regional solutions; particular­ly if faced with intra-regional obstinacy, bureaucrac­y and uncompromi­sing national self-interest.

Despite this and as the academics at the Ramphal Centre point out, the pandemic offers an opportunit­y to rethink the Caribbean economic model, and to explore alternativ­e ways in which smallness and fragmentat­ion can be overcome. There is no shortage of viable solutions. The issue is who can deliver regionally the long overdue structural changes that COVID-19 has highlighte­d?

David Jessop is a consultant to the Caribbean Council and can be contacted at david.jessop@caribbean-council.org

Previous columns can be found https://www.caribbean-council.org/research-analysis/

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