MONTEGO BAY, Jamaica - Barbados Opposition Leader, Hon.
Mia Amor Mottley has asserted that “the Caribbean needs a new development
vision” that will guide export growth and economic enrichment
“We have gone through all kinds of experiments over the last
50 years (spanning) industrialization, import substitution, opportunities that
balance the desire to bring people out of poverty but constrained by old
structures of production and in more recent times the new neo-liberal vision
that has rendered us susceptible to the dilution of local vision and
empowerment enfranchisement through foreign capital and foreign investment being the primary mechanism
through which production is obtained in our countries,” said the outspoken
politician.
Addressing the recently held 3rd CARIFORUM-EU
Business Forum hosted by the Caribbean Export Development Agency in
collaboration with
the
ACP Business Climate facility (BizClim), Ms Mottley conceded that there had been gains from the
perspective of lifting some people out of poverty and in the modernization of
some aspects of society. “But the rate at which the gains are coming and the
risk of pauperization for too many of our people who have made it is real and
it therefore causes us to ‘take fresh guard again’,” she declared.
Endorsing views expressed by former Jamaican Prime Minister
and Regional Negotiator, P.J. Patterson, Ms Mottley said the risk of fragmentation
of the region was real, coupled with the threat of people becoming insular and
myopic “and neither of them will bring success to us in the region and we have
to recognize that however it may appear to be expedient to focus on national
affairs is in fact a recipe towards undermining not just national entities but
as a regional collectively.”
Underscoring that people had to be at the centre of the
development process, Ms. Mottley declared that the sectors that will carry the
region to the next level of development were all based on human capital with
each citizen being capable of achieving the most they can through education,
exploitation of opportunity and their rich and creative capital.
She said governments and businesses needed to ensure that
their actions support and coincide so that people in the region have the
opportunity to be the best they can be - “to become global citizens anchored by
strong regional traditions and values.”
The former Barbadian Deputy Prime Minister said initiatives
designed to create wealth and allow for the transformation of the people of the
region had not succeeded, “and it is ironic that the very solution towards
achieving that wealth comes not simply from the importation of foreign
investment…. Not from accessing aid but comes from us putting policies and
programmes in place to allow our very citizens to be engines of the wealth that
we want to create for sustainable growth in the region.”
She told the Caribbean business leaders who are looking at
ways to boost export to recognize that “the world is not going to wait on us.”
“Too many countries are capable of leap-frogging the Caribbean
region because technology has made geography and distance completely irrelevant
in a way it was not 40 to 50 years ago”, she said.
The 3rd CARIFORUM-EU Business Forum is organized
by the Caribbean Export Development Agency
in collaboration with the ACP Business Climate facility (BizClim).
The ACP Business Climate Facility (BizClim) is a programme of the ACP
Secretariat financed by the European Union under the 10th European Development
Fund (EDF). It aims at fostering a business enabling environment for the
Private Sector in ACP countries and regions by improving legislation,
institutional frameworks and financial measures.
Mark Thomas and Clinton Pickering reporting from Montego Bay