Living in the Caribbean it is quite possible to imagine that the world sees the region and its economic fortunes in an unchanging light. As a consequence it is sometimes hard to understand how rapidly external sentiment can change. Nothing demonstrates this better than two Caribbean events in London in the past ten days at which engaged groups of individuals from the business community participated at levels not seen for some years by the countries concerned.
The first was a seminar on Cuba’s new investment law and the opportunities being made available in sectors from biotechnology to tourism and the Special Economic Development Zone at Mariel. The second, a week later, was a series of meetings around a visit by Jamaica’s Minister of Transport, works and Housing, Omar Davies, at which large financial institutions and major European companies were able to discuss the countries’ infrastructural plans for ports, roads and railways. In both cases there was a genuine engagement after years of scepticism and a sense of new found change and opportunity.
In the case of Cuba, the interest was sparked not just by the new foreign investment law, but also by an awareness that the
