From:TheBahamasWeekly.com
Business to Drive Recovery
By Hallam Hope
Nov 7, 2014 - 8:49:41 PM
As Caribbean economies continue to be buttressed by a weak world
economy an international two-day conference has been arranged in
Barbados to provide a road map for future economic growth.
A
salient consideration and focus of the November 11-12 Caribbean
Exporters’ Colloquium 2014, organised by The Caribbean Export
Development Agency, funded by the European Union as part of the 10th EDF
Regional Private Sector Development Programme, at the Hilton Barbados
is the role of the private sector.
Regional business executives
will be joined by Caribbean and International experts to examine the
contribution and performance of regional exports.
Trade expansion
is widely recognised as essential to providing a sustainable and
resilient path for regional development to occur, a statement from
Caribbean Export noted.
The growth trends of regional exports, in
both goods and services will be analysed under the conference theme:
“Building Economic Resilience in the Caribbean.”
The conference
will take a detailed look at the performance of key sectors, including
tourism, agro-processing and the creative goods and services. To
facilitate an understanding of the performance of the exports sector the
opening session chaired by His Excellency Ambassador Mikael Barfod,
Head of Delegation of the European Union to Barbados and the Eastern
Caribbean will seek to identify those exports that have proven to be
success stories for the Caribbean as well as those that have the highest
potential for growth.
One of eight companion panel discussions
on trade performance is the global competitiveness of the private sector
and importantly the challenges and hurdles it faces in being
competitive. Various studies have concluded that some of these
challenges are high operating costs, high transportation costs and
inadequacies in enabling structures and processes.
The colloquium
aims to come up with specific recommendations in this area by taking a
detailed look at hurdles and challenges that curb the private sector
ability to be competitive.
This assessment is particularly
relevant at a time when regional Governments are pressing the private
sector to do more to facilitate economic recovery from a six-year-old
recession that has hit economies hard.
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