Chairpersons of the Opening Ceremony
Her Excellency Dame Louise Lake-Tack, Governor General of Antigua and Barbuda
The Honourable Baldwin Spencer, Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda and Chairman of the Conference of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community
Colleague Heads of Government
Premiers, Chief Ministers and Leader of Government Business of the Associate Members of the Community
Secretary General of the Caribbean Community
Secretary General of the Organisation of American States
Secretary General of the Commonwealth Secretariat
Heads of Regional Organisations
Ministers of Government
Members of Parliament
Members of the Diplomatic Corps
Members of the Media
Ladies and Gentlemen:
I join with my Colleagues in expressing appreciation to you Prime Minister Spencer for the warmth of the reception which we have been accorded. From the outset I would also like to thank you Prime Minister for allowing so many of my people to come and work here in Antigua and Barbuda. I hope you will take good care of them until the day when Guyana’s changing economic circumstances hopefully will bring them back home.
I wish to congratulate the distinguished sons and daughter of the Caribbean who are being honoured here today. Your achievements make us all proud.
My Colleagues who have spoken before me have already touched on some of the critical issues of concern to the Community. Today I wish to share a few of my perspectives on these and other matters. I rest assured knowing that I don’t have the capacity or talent of being controversial like my colleague Ralph Gonsalves. He was at his best recently when he gave reasons why he thinks the regional enterprise is stalling. Even if you disagree with his views you have to admire his creative use of language.
I know it’s not usual for anyone to use the Opening Ceremony to raise controversial issues, however, I think it is important since this is one of the few opportunities we have to engage directly with our people, to move it beyond being a public relations exercise to one where we can stimulate debate on issues of concern to our Community.
On the plane traveling to Antigua and Barbuda this morning, I overheard someone coming to this meeting describing it as a talk shop. First, I want to point out that what we do is important in spite of the talk shop characterizations. We have moved the integration process forward in many ways. Dialogue is necessary if we are going to forge stronger ties in the Community and build a comity among its leaders. However, we have to be careful that our Meetings do not become ritualistic. I fear that often we go about dealing with the matters before us in a mechanical way – following a routine check list of recommendations (and for those who are familiar with the documents produced by our hard working technicians at the Secretariat) all that we are required to do is “to note”, “to encourage”, “to approve”, “to agree” or “to recommend”. I find that we are most productive when we are unfettered by prepackaged recommendations.
Secondly, for our regional enterprise to succeed we cannot continuously define and redefine the goals of integration. We have to balance the seeming obsession with architecture and framework and noble and lofty ideas, however important they are, with the need to work on practical initiatives – initiatives that create opportunities for our young people and entrepreneurs, initiatives that solve problems facing our people on a daily basis, initiatives that allow the Region to remain viable in the face of a changing world.
Here are some of my thoughts on what I think are three of the most pressing issues that we have to tackle together. They represent systemic challenges but if tackled aggressively could yield significant positive dividends for our Region.
The first relates to feeding our people:
Here is what we know, our regional food import bill is over $3 billion, food accounts for up to 20% of total imports in some of our countries, and almost all of our countries have a negative food trade balance that rises in some cases to as much as 10% of the Gross Domestic Product. Recent developments in food prices also pose a serious threat to the macroeconomic stability in our Region. We also know that by 2030 the global demand for food will double. With the growing of food crops to be converted to bio fuels reducing supply and with growing populations and changing diets increasing demand, many regions may not only face rising prices but shortages of food. How will we secure this Region’s food supplies? How are we going to ensure that we feed our children in the future? Do we want to leave them to an uncertain future that may mean hunger? You cannot grow food by rhetoric or talk or even a food strategy (important as it is) but by investment. This will happen when Governments show solid commitment by increasing budgetary allocations and work consistently to remove constraints to create more incentives for private sector investment. We attempted to deal with agriculture in this manner in Guyana through the recently held regional agricultural investment forum. Although in my view this was successful with respect to networking opportunities, it was disappointing from the lack of high level participation.
The second issue which I would like to address today is the preparation of our people for a knowledge-based world:
Our Region has a long and cherished reputation as a producer and, indeed, exporter of ideas and talent. Our contribution over the years to intellectual leadership and innovation worldwide has been vastly disproportionate to the smallness of our countries. We need to ask ourselves, is our education sector still competitive with other regions of the world? China is building five hundred universities and India graduates one million people every year. Can we convert our traditions of good education and innovative ideas into an export industry?
This is made all the more urgent in a world that is increasingly characterized by the creation of value through intellectual assets. An instructive example is Google Inc. a ten-year old company founded by two PhD students and with a current market capitalisation of $166 billion which dwarfs the size of our combined Regional economy. This company’s operations are based entirely on ideas and technological innovation and could be physically located anywhere in the world.
In the Caribbean, an investment of $300 million could place a computer in every household across our Region including 500 internet access points in Haiti, while broadband connectivity could be brought to all of these households at an annual cost of $200 million. (This if fully subsidized, less if we co-invest in fibre optic cables). Such an investment will create vast social bandwidth and would revolutionalise communication, education and business in our Region. We would be able to deliver health care and export of services more efficiently.
We need as a matter of the highest priority to devote more attention to the formulation of such initiatives that would be aimed at catalyzing a bold and more rapid transformation of our Region, and better equip us as a producer and exporter of intellectual capital through educational services. More intense efforts are required to mobilize development resources for such initiatives and private investments in these sectors.
The third issue pertains to climate change and its consequences:
Our countries are extremely vulnerable to climate change. Our location within the Atlantic hurricane belt and the fact that we are either small low-lying islands or mainland countries with large low-lying coastal plains make us highly susceptible to increasingly erratic and unpredictable weather patterns. We are therefore acutely aware of the dramatic increases that have been recorded over the last three decades in the frequency and intensity of natural disasters arising from extreme weather events, along with the associated human and financial cost. Sometimes these costs set back development for decades. Given the systemic impact of natural disasters on our societies, we must not sleep walk on the issue of climate change. The region, as a matter of urgency, must craft a strong and unified position for the process leading to Copenhagen next year to ensure a favorable post Kyoto framework: a framework that provides sufficient funds for mitigation and adaptation for our region and a framework that takes into account the huge contribution of our region through the standing forests in Guyana and Suriname which act as a huge carbon sink, removing and storing greenhouse gases. It is important that there be a market based mechanism to remunerate us for these ecological services. This could become a huge opportunity for the region.
Together Guyana and Surinam have 30 million hectares of forests. If one were to estimate, conservatively that each hectare stores 10 tons of carbon and each ton is priced at $10, this could result in an annual inflow of $3 Billion.
These are just three practical issues that we must work on – feeding our people into the future, remaining intellectually competitive with the rest of the world and seeking to safeguard ourselves from catastrophic disasters.
I cannot end without dealing with two topical issues.
First, when the integration movement was initiated, the people of the Region were at the centre of this process. They are in effect an essential pillar of the CSME and it was in recognition of this that we decided to fast track arrangements for the unrestricted movement of our people throughout the Region. Sadly, the very opposite is happening and they cannot enjoy one of the basic rights of hassle free travel as enshrined in the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas. What I find most disturbing is not the issue of the denial of entry of CARICOM citizens at the various ports of entry of the Community but the humiliation suffered at the hands of some immigration officers at these ports. One of the tragic truths is that we treat foreigners better than we treat our own people. While every Member State has a sovereign right to address what may be legitimate security concerns, harassment of our citizens is unacceptable. The CSME would be a failed enterprise unless our people are treated in a dignified manner.
Second, I would also like to share my perspective with respect to the CARIFORUM-EU Economic Partnership Agreement.
The United States as the largest country in the world sees it fit to subsidise its agricultural sector. The EU in the EPA negotiations as well, insisted that the sugar industry in Guadeloupe and Martinique must be protected yet when it boils down to the whole question of philosophy we feel we are not modern enough to argue for special and differential treatment. We are seduced by the rhetoric of free trade. We have to differentiate between rhetoric and philosophy. I do not feel ashamed to argue for preferences for our Region.
We need to have a practical approach. There are many good things in the EPA and we should seek to pursue these but we have to answer the many questions being asked by our people, people like Norman Girvan and others.
The EPA will define our external trade policy with all other trading partners. Are we satisfied with this? Will we allow the Most Favoured Nation clause to stand? Each state will have a bilateral relationship with the EU. CARICOM is not a party to the EPA. Will this cause intra-regional competition and fragmentation? According to one of Norman Girvan’s analyses there are 336 identified areas for implementation under the EPA compared to 300 outstanding areas for action under the CSME? Do we have the capacity to implement both? In case of conflict which one takes priority?
In the case of Guyana:
1. We do not plan to sign the EPA until we have completed a full national consultation or pragmatically earlier if the European Commission continues with its bully boy tactics of seeking to impose tariffs on our exports.
2. I feel that in the Region we should do only what is required to make the EPA WTO compatible as agreed to in the Cotonou agreement. It should be a goods- only agreement.
3. We should try to forge solidarity with other ACP countries, those who have initialed interim EPAs and desire renegotiation of some parts of the agreement and as well as with those who have not initialed any agreement. We have broken this ACP solidarity which was forged through Lome.
Finally, as Guyana prepares to host CARIFESTA X in August of this year we look forward to welcoming our brothers and sisters from the Caribbean as well as participants from countries outside of the Region. I extend an invitation to all of you to be a part of this spectacular event in celebration of the rich cultural diversity of our nations. Thank you.
