Executive Director of the International Trade Centre (ITC), Pamela Coke-Hamilton, says the competitiveness of the Caribbean in terms of a destination for doing business is constrained by factors that include the high cost of electricity, though she singles out Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago as exceptions to that rule.
“The high cost of doing business is a deterrent. Our electricity costs, apart from Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana, are prohibitive by a lot… we have to begin to look at how governments facilitate green recovery. How do they begin to use alternative energy resources to promote the capacity to produce?” the ITC Chief Executive remarked whilst addressing a recent webinar hosted by the Shridath Ramphal Centre at the Cave Hill campus of the University of the West Indies in Barbados.
In a presentation that focused largely on the desirability of the region moving to enhance its competitiveness and its attraction as an investment haven, Coke-Hamilton is reported as having told the forum that there is little point in signing on to new trade agreements with traditional bilateral partners where the region already possesses significant unused advantages. Asserting that that the Caribbean would have signed more trade agreements per capita than any other region, it was doing little in terms of giving effect to those agreements. “We continue to operate at a disadvantage with those markets we have signed agreements with,” she said, pointing specifically to the fact that the Caribbean’s utilisation of the CARIFORUM Economic Partnership Agreement with the EU remained minimally utilised twelve years after it had been signed. This, she said, is something that the region needs to address.
High electricity costs apart, Coke-Hamilton alluded to what she described as a lack of technology and innovation. Apart from asserting that the region probably has the lowest world average of research and development at 0.7%, ITC head said that the Caribbean continues to provide a 20th century educational system for the 21st century.
Contextually, Coke-Hamilton noted the dichotomy between talk about e-commerce in the region against the backdrop of a situation in which there is still no access for hundreds of thousands of people in the region.
Presently, the ITC is a joint subsidiary of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and UNCTAD and is a focal point for delivering technical assistance to developing countries particularly the least developed and small island developing states (SIDS). It also works with various donor agencies to provide technical assistance.
