‘Sagicor, Clico models essential’

Such firms, he said in New York, were absolutely essential if steady economic growth and business development were to occur after the launching of the Caribbean Single Market and Economy, CSME, in January.

"No longer are we going to rely on family firms, or even single national firms," he told an audience of Caribbean immigrants in Brooklyn. "Firms now have to be pan-Caribbean."

The Secretary-General, who was invited by the Caribbean-American Chamber of Commerce and Industry and its president, Dr Roy Hastick, to speak about Trade and Investment Opportunities in the Caribbean after the CSME, articulated the need for "pan-Caribbean firms" because they would ensure that people across the region "have a vested interest" in corporate entities, their profitability and achievements, "not just one group creaming off."

As he saw it, "the new pan-Caribbean firms emerging under the CSME (would) provide excellent investment opportunities" for people in Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Grenada, and their neighbours.

As a matter of fact, Carrington explained to his audience – attorneys, financial analysts, a civil court judge, entrepreneurs, and Caribbean community organisation leaders – that "banking and insurance industries have already taken the lead in the area."

The examples he cited were Clico, with headquarters in Trinidad and Tobago, and Sagicor, a Barbados-based company that had now extended its corporate wings out of the Caribbean, thus becoming an "international" firm.

"We need more of those" corporations, he said.