WHILE SEVERAL Caribbean leaders, in government and opposition, argue in circles about the merits or otherwise of regional integration, very few appear conscious of the fundamental changes that are overtaking the region as a consequence of economic globalisation. It has taken the World Bank to offer the region a road map out of its seeming confusion about the way it should go.
The bank's recently-released report, 'A Time to Choose: Caribbean Development in the 21st Century', tells us what we have long known: economically, things cannot remain the same. The report goes further in suggesting what the region can do.
It proposes that the region eschews the trade preferences that have been an economic crutch for the past 30 years. Despite their apparent advantages, these preferences have left the region with a shrinking share of the European and North American markets.
The bank sees benefits from offshore education, health services and information and communication technology, which it suggests are potentially strong areas of growth for the English-speaking countries.
Getting regional leaders and policymakers to make a move along this path may not be so easy. Ignoring the obvious or not seeing it in the changing economic paradigm, they continue to determine economic growth by outdated measurements.
The irony is that the Caribbean region has for long been dependent on tourism a significant service. Arguments about danger from 'fickle' tourism are baseless. Trinidad and Tobago, the region's main energy exporter, has suffered and will again suffer from movement in the prices of equally fickle oil and gas.
In those areas in which governments claim to have accepted the increasing economic value of information and communication technology, there appears to be myopia and confusion. In Jamaica, the technology minister, who once spoke of the need to create a computer literate and technologically-advanced society, was silent when his colleague minister of finance made the retrograde step on re-imposing a tax on computers.
The World Bank accepts that the new economic route for the region will not be easy. It sees hurdles in sub-standard social services such as health and education, and the increasing dead-weight of intractable unemployment. We are concerned that fundamental changes in economic policy could be hindered by repeated indications of petty parochialism and nationalism that are blind to the impact on our small economies of economic globalisation.
The global economy is changing rapidly and significantly. Caribbean economic minds must start thinking out of the domestic box and combine their efforts to make beneficial use of new challenges that bring new opportunities.
THE OPINIONS ON THIS PAGE, EXCEPT FOR THE ABOVE, DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE GLEANER.
