The region needs to develop much stronger business support organizations
Encouraging the Caribbean private sector to become more dynamic is far from easy. This is not to comment on the largest Caribbean companies – the forty or more enterprises which are multinational, well financed and managed, and are invested in or exporting across the region as well as to North and South America and Europe. [...]
Time is short for breathing life into the EPA
Who will breathe life into the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with Europe: government, the private sector, regional institutions? Signed in 2008, the EPA – a reciprocal trade agreement with development dimensions – seems somehow to belong to another age. It was negotiated against the background of widespread acceptance that freer trade and the market would [...]
Cuba’s new proposed guidelines envisage decentralised, socialist-oriented state giving greater economic freedom to individuals
Cuba’s economy is in a bad way. There is a widespread sense of social discontent and a deep concern among many groups in society including some of those who are committed to Cuba’s communist system. In order to address this crisis, in a system long overdue for adjustment, government has recognised that reform is necessary, [...]
Caribbean report on UK passenger tax puts forward solution
It is not often that the Caribbean can say it is leading global thinking on an issue, but that it what happened this week when the Caribbean Tourism Organi-sation (CTO) released a detailed report on the damaging effect on tourism that the UK government’s controversial Air Passenger Duty (APD) is having. More importantly, its 29-page [...]
Little has happened about food security in the Caribbean over the last two years
Once again global food prices are spiralling upwards. On November 2 the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) announced that its global food price index had climbed for the fifth month in a row and had reached its highest level since its index peaked in July 2008. This is not good news for countries from [...]
Europe should do more to find ways to engage Cuba
On Monday, October 25, EU member states will review their common position towards Cuba. Although the overall approach is unlikely to change, there is the possibility that Europe may consider the development of a bilateral dialogue about a new institutional framework within which to develop future relations. Europe’s common policy and its implementation continues to [...]
It is hard to find accurate figures on the tourism industry
One of the stranger aspects of the Caribbean is the disjunction between the many reports and studies produced by academic or multilateral institutions and the thinking of those intimately involved in the industries concerned. In recent weeks I have had reason to take an interest in why this should be and its implications, and have [...]
The UK is contemplating withdrawing its navy from the Caribbean
A week ago a letter was sent from the British Defence Secretary Liam Fox to the British Prime Minister David Cameron. Its text appeared in the British newspapers having been leaked by sources unknown. It related to the United Kingdom’s increasingly tense defence review which has been subsumed into Britain’s wider approach to making huge [...]
The Caribbean should encourage the new Brazilian government to take a greater interest in the region
On October 3, over 100m of Brazil’s 194m people will vote for a successor to that nation’s hugely popular and successful President, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. The outcome will matter not only in the Caribbean and the wider hemisphere, but as much or more to the G20 of which Brazil is a member, as [...]
The Caribbean’s concerns on APD were clearly heard in the UK
A week or so ago, six tourism ministers visited London as a part of a group co-ordinated by the Caribbean Tourism Organisation (CTO).There they met with ministers, politicians and their industry counterparts. Their principal purpose was to express the region’s deep concern about increases in the United Kingdom’s Air Passenger Duty (APD) and to try [...]
What future for Caricom?
What future for Caricom? Recent developments in the form of concern about Trini-dad’s commitment to the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) and the appointment of a new Secretary General suggest that the coming months may well determine its future trajectory. Very soon Caricom heads of government will have to decide who will take charge at [...]
Caricom’s private sector should look to the Dominican Republic
Is it possible to bridge the gulf in the understanding that exists between the Dominican Republic and the English speaking Caribbean? Despite the Dominican Republic having a strong and growing economy, its companies looking outwards for new investment opportunities; and with a government that is playing an ever more significant role in the Hemisphere and [...]
Bodies being set up to govern EPA
– but little forward movement by private sector It is unlikely that you have ever heard of Christofer Fjellner from Finland or Peter Sratsny from Slovakia. It is however possible that you may know of José Bové, the environmental campaigner who rose to fame in France when in protest he destroyed a MacDonald’s burger [...]
Britain’s new foreign policy
Britain has a new foreign policy. Its coalition government has begun to enunciate a more pragmatic approach that recognises the ways in which the world has changed, political and economic relationships overlap and new centres of power are emerging. William Hague, the UK’s new Foreign Secretary, and a former leader of the Conservative Party, has [...]
Can the Doha Round deadlock be broken?
By David Jessop The Doha Round at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) is deadlocked. Although officials and ambassadors continue behind the scenes to negotiate building blocks for an eventual agreement, there is the sense that the political will required to re-energise the process does not exist. So much so that in Geneva there is a [...]