GRENADA AFTER IVAN

Trinidad and Tobago’s aid to hurricane scarred Grenada should embrace — in addition to the standard food, medical, clothing and other emergency supplies — financial and technical assistance to the country’s labour intensive agricultural sector. This should include emphasis on up-to-date techniques which would facilitate a needed reduction in the cost of production in an effort to make the island’s agricultural products more competitive. Of crucial importance is the dispatching of technical teams to assess the damage done to nutmeg and cocoa estates and assisting in the early resumption of meaningful exports of nutmeg and mace.

There is a need, too, to survey the extent of the damage done to Grenada’s banana estates, which had benefited from the industry’s rehabilitation programme, interrupted in 1999 by Hurricane Lenny and now by last Tuesday’s brutal charge of Hurricane Ivan. Financial assistance should be provided to banana growers, not merely to restart their estates, but with a view to making them more profitable through the use of modern cost effective techniques employed sucessfully in Central America by Chiquito, United Fruit and what have you. This would assist Grenada’s banana exports to move away from being relatively modest earners and become more visible and competitive at least in the regional market place.

In addition, the country’s tourism industry took a severe battering from Hurricane Ivan and steps to restore full confidence in Grenada as a premier place to visit are being taken. Already, Grenada’s prime minister, Dr Keith Mitchell, acknowledging the importance to the island’s tourism industry of the segment of the 2007 World Cup cricket matches awarded to his country by the ICC, has stressed that his government would rebuild the severely damaged Grenada National Stadium. Dr Mitchell’s declaration that the Cricket World Cup was very important for Grenada, and that his government intended to rebuild the stadium to fulfil its obligations to the international cricketing community, was a recognition that the crowds and media attention the matches would attract would be beneficial to the country’s tourism.

As a lagniappe, the interest generated could also be used to attract regional and international investment to Grenada. What was instructive was that Dr Mitchell clearly understood that the fight to rebuild Grenada after Hurricane Ivan had to begin at the top. His was a signal that he was prepared to and would lead the charge. He was not about to let Grenada feel sorry for itself. By helping Grenada to regain its economic feet, Trinidad and Tobago, even as it assists a fellow CARICOM member state, will also be helping itself, as Grenada and the rest of the Caribbean community of nations are this country’s second largest export market. Newsday wishes Jamaica, Grenada, St Vincent and the Grenadines and Tobago the speediest possible return to normalcy after Hurricane Ivan.