CARICOM Secretary-General, Mr Edwin Carrington concluded a whirlwind five-day visit to North America on Friday June 21, with an address to a CARICOM Day celebration at New York's Grand Prospect Hall in Brooklyn.
Earlier in the week, Mr Carrington had delivered the feature address at CARICOM Day celebrations in Ottawa, Canada on Monday June 17 and on Wednesday June 19 delivered one of the keynote addresses at the Third Annual Conference and Expo of the Word Bank Group's Staff Exchange Programme in Washington, USA. While in Ottawa, Mr Carrington took the opportunity to meet with Canada's Assistant Deputy Minister (Americas) in the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, the Hon. Mark Lortie.
The Secretary-General congratulated the CARICOM High Commissioners in Canada, led by the Dean H.E. George. R. “Mario” Bullen, High Commissioner of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), for organising the event which he believed to be “virtually unique” among the region's overseas representatives.
“This recognition of ourselves as a Community is an important factor, not only in terms of how we see ourselves as a people, but also in our relationship with the rest of the world. The more we see ourselves as one Community rather than as separate States and the more we act as such, the more the rest of the world will see us as one and the greater will be our impact on the global stage,” Mr Carrington said.
The Secretary-General also noted in his address, which was very well received, that the 21st Anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Basseterre which created the OECS was the following day, June 18, and pointed out that the OECS represented “in many ways, the vanguard of the Caribbean Community,” with its single currency, single Central Bank and a regional judicial system.
After briefly tracing the history of the Region's 'special relationship' with Canada, and praising that country's record of assistance to the Caribbean, Mr Carrington pointed out that the changing world seemed set to bring changes to that relationship. He cited the shift in the overall trade balance with Canada from one favourable to the Caribbean to one favourable to Canada as one indication of that change.
However, the Secretary-General pointed out that the relationship went beyond mere dollars and cents and was beneficial to both parties. Canada, he said had benefitted from the thousands of skilled and trained workers who had migrated from the Caribbean and continued to do so to help to develop Canada.
“So far as regards valuation, no one has come up with a feasible method of quantifying the value of this “export” – neither its cost to the exporting countries nor its worth to the receiving ones. We know that millions of dollars invested by the Caribbean Community in developing skills and providing training to further our development agenda have redounded to the benefit of other countries, Canada included,” he said.
In the face of recent recruitment drives by industrial countries for Caribbean skilled workers, in particular nurses and teachers, the Secretary-General suggested that Canada, in its position as chair of the G-8 countries, could influence the group towards compensation by some sort of capital grant resources to enable our countries to train replacements for the lost skilled workforce. He also urged the Canadians to champion the cause of Haiti within the Group “to gain access to the funds – some already approved – it so desperately needs from the international financial community.”
“To deny Haiti those funds after the Government had done its part in meeting the many conditions set by the international community is unjust and indeed inhumane.” Have no doubt about it, he assured the gathering, “the call for adherence by Haiti to the principles of good governance is also supported by the Caribbean Community. But we are also painfully aware that without access to the necessary resources, the government's hands are tied in so far as implementing practical measures to shore up the struggling democracy is concerned. It is in this context that CARICOM has appealed to the Friends of Haiti and the wider international community to recognise the need to move without further delay in obtaining those desperately needed resources, on behalf of the struggling, impoverished people of Haiti,” he added.
The Secretary-General also advised the High Commissioners that their role could be instrumental in “galvanising interest in the region as a haven for investment” as the Community moves to establish the Single Market and Economy.
He also had a message for the diaspora that “the time has also come for those of you who live and work away from home to consider what more can you do to contribute to this process of enhancing the Caribbean society which nurtured you. What skills do you have to lend or give? What training can you provide? What investment decision can you make to benefit the Caribbean Community? What influence can you bring to bear in your adopted homelands to foster the development of partnerships with the Caribbean Community?”
It was a message that he also brought to New York at the CARICOM Day celebration staged by the Carib Voice newspaper and organised by its editor Mr Anand Boodram. He told his rapt New York audience that the encouragement from “our Caribbean brothers and sisters in the diaspora can be a definite spur to our activities in forging a united Caribbean that has for so long been dreamt of.”
Mr Carrington said the foundation existed from which an historic and unprecedented involvement by the Caribbean diaspora in the United States and the rest of North America in the development of the Region which nurtured them could take place. He made this point against the background of the 2000 US Census which showed there were approximately 1.75 million people classified as West Indian or of West Indian ancestry in the United States not including the Hispanic West Indies.
While recognising the fact that Caribbean people including Haiti, sent back to the Region more than one billion US dollars in remittances according to statistics for the year 2000, the Secretary-General said more than cash was needed.
“I am also talking about accessing your skills, your ideas and the influence that you may be able to exert on the decision-makers in your adopted country to make a lasting and positive impact on the fortunes of our Region,” he said.
Mr Carrington gave a brief update on the activities in the Community with respect to the Single Market and Economy, foreign policy matters, including external trade negotiations, as well as in the area of functional cooperation in sectors such as health, culture and education. He then offered some suggestions to the gathering with respect to becoming involved in the development of the Community.
He cited the Regional Development Fund which is designed to assist the less developed countries and those dislocated by the operations of the Single Market and Economy as an important avenue for investment.
“We are also particularly looking forward to the weight of your voice in advancing Caribbean interests among the decision-makers in the United States of America. For instance on the very sensitive issue of immigration and particularly deportation matters, we hope, with the support of your voice, for a more considerate approach by the United States Government,” he said.
Mr Carrington in reminding his audience of next year's 30th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Chaguaramas said the anniversary might “well signal the arrival of a new generation of leaders to the crease.” He added that many of the young people present at the celebration might well be among them.
“To such leaders would fall the responsibility to ensure that at our Golden Jubilee, that is in 20 years time, we would be able to say that our CARICOM is not only the longest surviving but also the most united, prosperous, viable and secure Community, dare I say, in the world. It depends on all of us,” he added.
Among those present at the occasion was New York Governor George Pataki's Special Adviser on the Caribbean, the former New York City Councillor Ms Una Clarke and her daughter New York City Councillor, Yvette Clarke who presented Mr Carrington with a proclamation from the Council of the City of New York which declared June 21 CARICOM Day. Awards were presented to a number of Caribbean-born personalities for their contribution in various fields in the United States.
At the World Bank in Washington, on Wednesday June 19, the Secretary-General delivered an address entitled “The Widening Development Gaps: How Can Cross-sectoral Partnerships Assist Small Caricom Countries Meet the Challenge”. In it, he followed up from a CARICOM view point, the Secretariat's statement at the Monterrey Financing for Development Meeting in which it identified the gaps in human resources, technology, knowledge and information, production and trade and terms of trade between developed and developing countries.
Mr Carrington said these gaps were particularly significant in the case of the small economies of the CARICOM countries which were confronted with the realities of a globalised world and the necessity to transform and reconstruct their economies, historically reliant on a narrow production base, preferential trade, few major exports and an inordinately high level of imports.
He pointed out that with major economic sectors such as bananas , tourism and other services under severe threat, the situation of these countries presented a historically unique opportunity for an international partnership with a World Bank created for reconstruction and development. In his presentation, he focused on human resources, technology and trade and terms of trade.
Mr Carrington told the gathering which included CARICOM Ambassadors to the United States, President of the Caribbean Development Bank, Professor Compton Bourne and former CARICOM Secretary-General Mr Roderick Rainford, who were both part of a panel discussing the presentation, that in recent years major developed and even some developing countries have been systematically targeting Caribbean skilled resources. This systematic recruitment, he said added to the historical regional tendency for migration and to the natural tendency for a proportion of those trained abroad to remain.
Also present at the very well attended session which generated a lot of debate were a number of Caribbean nationals who work at the World Bank Group including the President of the Caribbean Association at the World Bank Group, Mr Hutton Archer and Ms Pauline Ramprasad, a Guyanese national who is Manager of the World Bank Staff Exchange Programme.
He pointed out that the cost of graduate and post-graduate training for CARICOM nationals in developed countries such as Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States of America had increased significantly and the number of scholarships had decreased as rapidly. “CARICOM countries now received more scholarships from Cuba than from Canada, the United Kingdom and the Unites States of America combined,” he revealed.
“In this scenario of increasingly limited budgetary capacity of CARICOM Governments, higher cost of education, in particular scientific and technological education and aggressive recruitment by industrialised and technologically advanced countries, the prospects of a progressively widening human resource development gap between CARICOM and developed countries is most realistic,” he argued.
Though the Technology Gap was significantly related to the Human Resource Development Gap he said it also encompassed access to technology, the capacity for technological innovation and adaptation and the presence of the basic technological infrastructure such as telecommunication and electricity services.
CARICOM countries he said recognised the importance of making progress in the area of technology and work was in progress to design a regional approach to information, communication and technology (ICT) development.
In mentioning other positive developments in specific countries such as increase in computer access, he said they were critical and necessary.
“In the dynamic nature of technology however, they are unlikely to lead by themselves, to a closing of the technology gap. Significant cooperation with developed countries and multilateral financial institutions, in particular development banks, as well as our universities and research institutions, working hand in hand with technology organisations and firms, will be necessary,” he added.
With respect to the trade and terms of trade gap, the Secretary-General said of the six countries for which data are available, the foreign trade to GDP ratio exceeded 100 percent in four cases. This compared with high income countries where the average is about 40 percent. Critically for most of the countries, the ratio of imports to GDP increased between 1980 and 1999 while the exports to GDP ratio declined or remained constant over the period. The behaviour of the import/GDP ratio and export/GDP ratio indicated a widening gap between imports and exports, he added.
Reference to these areas, he said gave an idea of the magnitude of the challenge to CARICOM in its effort not to be further marginalised in this technologically driven phase of globalisation.
“Much is outside of the control of countries of that small size and level of development. Much is driven by the dynamics of the market. There is however, much that is driven by international economic, financial, trade, technology and resource allocation policies. These policies are heavily influenced by the major developed and technologically advanced countries and multilateral institutions such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation. The technical and analytical capacity and the resources for partnerships in these multilateral institutions could be a positive factor in moderating the rate at which critical development gaps widen between the technologically advanced and the technologically challenged countries of the world, in particular the small and technologically challenged,” he said.
The international community, including the multilateral financial institutions, had a major role to play in respect of financial resource flows to developing countries and, particularly to small developing countries where the downward trend over the 1990's has been even more pronounced. The Monterrey Conference on Financing for Development, he said, had promised resources to halt the declining trend and to increase international financial and technical cooperation for development. It remains to be seen, he added whether the measures agreed on would be adequate to sustain sufficient and stable private financial flows to developing countries and countries with economies in transition.
He hoped that these issues would be given more concrete expression in the World Summit for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg.
“Multilateral Financial institutions such as the World Bank, which have long experience with the nature of the development challenge have a responsibility to demonstrate that partnerships cannot only be voluntary, private sector driven, but must include predictable partnerships with governments and inter-governmental institutions as well. The partnership we seek must be one in which differences between the partners in terms of strength and intrinsic capacity are recognised and mutually agreed arrangements are made to compensate for such inequities and asymmetries that may exist,” he concluded.
