NEVILLE NICHOLLS WAS RIGHT

Sustained economic growth of Member States of the Caribbean Community of Nations (Caricom) will, undoubtedly, receive a needed and valuable assist from Monday’s formal coming into being of phase one of the Caribbean Single Market and Economy.

Nonetheless, there is a need for Caricom countries to revisit the call made a few years ago by former President of the Caribbean Develop-ment Bank, Sir Neville Nicholls, both to implement and maintain sound macro-economic policies "to make their economies more attractive to local and foreign investments."

Sir Neville, who is Chairman of the Cave Hill Campus Council of the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados, had cautioned that if the economies "of our Region are to grow at a rate sufficient to make a serious dent in unemployment and poverty levels, then investments in these economies would have to increase significantly." Nicholls’ crucial address —"Optimising the Competitive Potential of the Region’s Emerging Sectors" — was delivered in Trinidad, and it is necessary to go back to it if the many cobwebs of misinformation and misunderstanding in the Region are to be cleared.

Nicholls had viewed with concern then, and perhaps this had prompted him even more to emphasise the need to attract investments, the unfortunate struggle by all too many Caribbean countries for the maintaining of "preferential trading arrangements in the face of clearly diminishing international support for it." Preferential entry quotas for Caribbean bananas and raw sugar, all in the context of the spirit of the 1975 Convention of Lome must be regarded as history.

And we must stop looking back as a Caribbean people to the "preferential trading arrangements" as a guide to the economic future of the Region. Instead, we have to market the Region as a place in which domestic, regional and international investors can have faith in its potential. We have, even as we move to implement and maintain the macro-economic policies advocated by Sir Neville, to set up support systems. We have to educate and motivate our young people, encourage them to acquire skills, professions and technology, to ready themselves for the challenges of globalisation imposed on the Region from without.

We will not attract needed capital by holding on to the apron strings of long outmoded colonialist economic strategies which saw us selling, or was it required to sell, commodities rather than products. Sadly, there are those for whatever the reason who refuse to accept that what is required today, if the Caribbean Community of Nations is to build a strong and constantly growing economic foundation, is not holding on to the commodity, raw cane sugar, but rather offering and professionally marketing to the world products made from sugar cane, for example specialty rums and specialty sugars.

Already we have been witnesses to the price offered by the European Union for the Region’s raw cane sugar (all in the context of the Sugar Protocol of the Convention of Lome) being slashed drastically. The signals are there, and they are not simply warnings of additional price cuts, but rather the approaching end to all "preferential trading arrangements."

It is the reality of today’s international market place. And it should not be seen as having come as a surprise to the Caribbean, something of the proverbial thief in the night. Rather, the former Caribbean Development Bank President, Neville Nicholls, had been talking about it for at least a decade and a half, along with the need to make Caribbean economies more attractive to domestic and foreign investments. Governments across the Region, where this is not now done, will need to pursue policies aimed at stimulating their economies employing the Keynesian Budget strategy, where applicable, whether or not of surpluses.

They will need, too, to adopt policies of job creation on a continuous basis, even where the jobs are of a temporary nature as, for example, Trinidad and Tobago’s CEPEP and/or Unemploy-ment Relief Programme, or where they are permanent, the two to act as spurs to increased economic activity. In Trinidad and Tobago the People’s National Movement Government is pursuing a major housing programme in addition to expanding existing industrial estates and the number of these estates. I offer these as models to, say, the Eastern Caribbean in particular, although I admit that financial support should come from TT for their implementation. The sum total, or should the phrase be the aim of the macro economic policies, is continued social stability, always a key factor in attracting new and/or expanded investments.

Investors, whether home grown or international, still prefer to know that their capital outlays are safe, or can with reason, be expected to be safe.

It is clearly not enough for regional audiences to sit still after each General Election. Instead, they should urge on their Parliamentary representatives, whatever the Caribbean country, to act in a positive and decisive manner. China, India, Mexico, all with their cheap labour; the World Trade Organisation, the collapse of old preferential trading arrangements and globalisation are not the only threats to Caricom economic progress. Instead, the principal threat has been within the Region itself — that of apathy, a refusal to appreciate and seek out the larger picture.

And if I may add, a seeming reluctance to accept that the best people to protect the economic and social interests of the Region are the Caribbean people themselves.