David Jessop

Will innovative or new technologies become a threat to vested interests in the Caribbean?

A little over a week ago the British parliamentarian, Sir Eric Pickles – a cabinet member until May of this year and a former Chairman of the Conservative Party – told the London Guardian that the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, was determined to have the BVI and the Cayman Islands adopt public registers of beneficial ownership either “through legislation, guidance or naked pressure”.

Is it helpful to describe Latin America and the Caribbean as if it were a single entity?

In a matter of days the European Commission will launch a communication (policy paper) on the options for post-Cotonou arrangements with the ACP, the grouping that brings together 79 African, Caribbean and Pacific nations.

In a little over a month’s time negotiators from around the world will gather in Paris to try to reach a final and globally binding agreement on a new treaty on climate change.

The Caribbean has just eighteen congressional working days from Sunday September 20 to try to have the US Congress or the District of Colombia address an act naming seventeen Caribbean nations as ‘tax havens’.

A few days ago in London, the Bahamas Prime Minister, Perry Christie, told a meeting organised by Caribbean Export that the region needed a new formula to maximise investment.

Should one believe the message of the financial markets that the global economy is on the edge of another downturn?

Mutual incomprehension perhaps best sums up the way in which the anglophone Caribbean and the Dominican Republic presently regard one another.

One of the Caribbean tourism industry’s greatest concerns may be about to materialise: US citizens being allowed to travel to Cuba on an individual basis.

Cyber-security incidents continue to rise. Accord-ing to PwC’s Global State of Information Security Survey 2015, attacks rose internationally by 48 per cent in 2014 resulting in huge remedial and reputational costs to the companies and governments concerned.

Hardly a day passes without a new twist in the increasingly tense and acrimonious legal battle over the unfinished US$3.5 billion Baha Mar resort on New Providence in the Bahamas.

When it comes to Cuba what is often missed is that its government’s primary focus is not on the process of normalising its relationship with the US, but on the far more fundamental domestic reforms that are gradually changing the country’s political and economic model in ways that are intended to better deliver its objectives.

Part 1 In the last seven months much has been written about Cuba and the reopening of full diplomatic relations with the US.

Climate change is an issue on which the Caribbean has every reason to have its voice heard and be taken very seriously.

When Caricom Heads of Government met in Barbados at the start of the month, their proceedings were dominated by a discussion of Venezuela’s unjustified claim to much of Guyana’s coastline and most of its exclusive economic zone, and to the marine jurisdictions of a number of other Caribbean member states.

A little over a week ago at least 38 holidaymakers died on a beach in Tunisia, and many more were injured in an appalling terrorist attack aimed at killing visitors and damaging terminally that country’s tourism industry.

For many years now, the Caribbean has been able to cultivate a generally positive image of high literacy levels and academic achievement.

Every time that Caricom Heads of Government meet, they include language in their final communiqué on the Guyana-Venezuela border controversy.

In North America and Europe there are from time to time international conferences that quietly enable new thinking.