MIAMI, (Reuters) – Higher global oil prices are squeezing economies and family budgets in the Caribbean, one of the last regions in the world still struggling to bounce back from the global financial crisis.
Few Caribbean countries, most of them small, fragile and import-dependent, are oil producers, and sharp increases in oil prices send shudders across a region that spends billions of dollars a year on energy imports.
The recent climb in oil prices could put at risk the Caribbean’s hope of ending a lengthy economic slump from which only a handful of its countries have emerged.
“It is a troubling scenario,” said Heather Berkman, an analyst at the Eurasia Group risk consulting firm.
As in other parts of the world, rising gas prices are weighing on the lives of ordinary people across the region from impoverished Haiti to wealthier countries like Barbados.
In Haiti, which was battered by a devastating earthquake last year and where most people live on less than $2 a day, the cost of a gallon of gas has shot up to nearly $5. “When I stop in traffic, I turn off the car to save gas,” said Adler Jean-Jacques, a 40-year-old school teacher in Port-au-Prince. “I don’t turn on the air-conditioning — even though it’s hot.”
The higher prices come as many Caribbean nations are hoping their financial health will finally improve after several years of shrinking economies, budget deficits and ballooning debt loads.
Caribbean economies initially withstood the impact of the worldwide recession since many are not as financially integrated with the global economy.
