Lessons from across the Atlantic

To stem the protracted crisis in the eurozone, boost jobs and promote growth, last week the European Commission put forward a set of new proposals, in the form of its Single Market Act II. The aim is to make it easier for people and businesses to move and do business within the European Union. This new act has four aims: to foster mobility of people and businesses across borders; facilitate access to finance in the 27 member states of the EU; bolster social entrepreneurship and improve consumer confidence. It follows Act I, adopted in April 2011. Its key actions are currently being discussed by the European Parliament and a few of them will be in place by the end of 2012.

We commend this move as it shows, yet again, the European Union’s political commitment to the ongoing development of its single market – its main economic engine – so that its citizens can derive maximum benefit from the free movement of goods, services, capital and people. Despite its complex institutional structure, lengthy bureaucracy and business having to be conducted in 23 official languages, the European Union is able to identify its challenges, plan to confront them, discuss viable options and implement steps to make it easier to live, work and do business.

We recommend that a similar approach be used within the context of the Caribbean Single Market and Economy to foster greater regional economic cooperation and development in an ever dynamic global framework. An ‘ever closer union’ in the Caribbean appears elusive but it should be simple enough given the circumstances. Unlike the countries of the European Union, Caribbean countries were never pitted against each other in conflict and bloodshed and there are, for the time being, at most two official languages for the 12 full members of the regional bloc. For the most part, because of our ancestry and colonial past, our cultures are very similar.

And so we ask, what is the problem? But perhaps that is the problem – the lack of any major regional challenges that produce the deep rifts and deadly cleavages that would spur the political will for swift action to be taken to ensure the very survival of the region – through social and economic interdependency. Even now, unfair trading practices still exist within the bloc: a prime example of this surfacing earlier this year with Trinidad blocking the entry into their market of Barbados’ Pine Hill Dairy milk and juices for frivolous stated reasons. It is examples like this that prove that Caribbean countries are still not thinking or operating like a single economic bloc that is a force to be reckoned with on the global scene … and to our detriment.

But beyond that, the same lack of political will seen at the regional level can be seen at the individual government level. Amid global economic challenges, would the goal not be to foster growth, attract foreign direct investment wherever possible and create employment? The focus should be on developing viable and necessary time-bound plans to facilitate foreign investment. The next logical step is the implementation of those plans, but the best of efforts are often thwarted by burdensome bureaucracy.

Yet, the rhetoric continues at the individual government and the regional summit level. Only when we become serious about conducting business with each other at the regional level and about consistently attracting investment to our shores can we hope to move to the next level in our economic development. But for that to happen, the lofty rhetoric must be backed by concrete action.

Diplomatically cutting costs

By Sir Ronald Sanders

Small states in the Caribbean would do well to follow the pattern of Britain and Canada in pooling and sharing diplomatic missions abroad. Caribbean countries spend millions of dollars every year on individual diplomatic missions when shared missions would be far more cost effective.

On September 24, the foreign ministers of Britain and Canada, William Hague and John Baird, announced in Ottawa that their two governments have signed an agreement under which they would share facilities and consular services in several countries.

Money is a significant factor in the decision. The foreign services of both countries have had cuts to their budgets. The British government has reduced its financial allocation to its Foreign and Commonwealth Office by $160 million and the Canadian government has sliced $170 million from the budget from its Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. Yet, the two governments are keen to establish a presence in markets where there is potential for business. The collaboration between their foreign services, therefore, makes perfect sense.

What makes the collaboration more practical is that Britain and Canada are, for the most part, like-minded countries, with similar values domestically and internationally. They have a history of co-operation as members of the Commonwealth. While their policies have diverged on issues, there is much greater commonality than discord between them.

John Baird summed it up by saying: “This is about increasing Canada’s diplomatic reach in a handful of areas where we don’t already have a presence. Canada will be sharing space, as we do with other trusted countries, to get maximum reach at minimal cost to taxpayers. We will do so while maintaining our principled, independent foreign policy.”

It is precisely shared values and common objectives in the international arena that should also encourage Caribbean small states to pool and share their diplomatic missions. Within the framework of the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM) Treaty, they have a wide range of common purposes better served by robust collective action than by feeble national efforts.

Apart from the financial savings that would be achieved, the effectiveness of diplomatic missions to international or multinational organisations such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the European Union (EU), the Organisation of American States (OAS) and several UN organisations would also become more effective through the sharing of “back office” experts to service each of the missions.

In Geneva, where the WTO and several UN organisations are located, the Commonwealth has provided office space for several small states from the Caribbean and the Pacific. Despite this, there are several Caribbean countries that are not represented by a resident team. For some of them, accredited Ambassadors are located in Brussels, London or as far away as New York making their participation marginal - if not ineffectual - to vital decision-making that affects their countries. Further, even where countries are represented, missions are under-manned to service the myriad committees that meet regularly on complex issues.

A similar observation is true of Brussels where the Caribbean’s crucial relationship with the EU is played out. Again, many Caribbean countries are not represented and even where there is representation, Embassies lack the range of skills necessary to cope with the large staff and myriad experts available to the EU organs such as the European Commission. A joint Caribbean “back office” of appropriately skilled persons serving all Caribbean countries would help to improve the negotiating capacity of Caribbean representatives.

Where there is a requirement by an international or multinational agency that countries be individually represented, it is perfectly feasible for each Caribbean small state to name a representative while sharing offices and ‘back office’ experts and facilities. Money would be saved with greater benefits being derived from informed analysis and preparation of the issues at hand. And, there should be nothing to stop any country from pursuing on its own a matter in which it has a special national interest. Even in that regard the country involved would still have the support of the shared ‘back office’ expertise.

As far as bilateral relations are concerned, Caribbean nationals resident in the UK, Canada and the United States are, for the most part, dual citizens of those countries. Therefore consular services do not apply to them. For visiting Caribbean nationals, such as students or tourists, their numbers are small enough to be handled by a joint Caribbean Embassy or High Commission. Special envoys trouble-shooting particular bilateral issues with a country would also be more productive and cost efficient.

It may be argued that remittances and investments from the Caribbean Diaspora are of importance to several Caribbean countries and, therefore, regular engagement with them is important. This is certainly true for countries such as Jamaica and Guyana where remittances make a significant contribution to foreign exchange receipts. But, such regular engagements with the Diaspora could be maintained by visits from Ministerial and other delegations. Indeed, they may even be more welcome.

Sharing of overseas missions is not a novel idea. For instance, when Guyana and Barbados became independent in 1966, they shared a High Commissioner in London, and for many years the independent countries of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) had one High Commission in London and Ottawa. Even Britain and Canada had such arrangements before their September 24 announcement. British diplomats are housed in the Canadian embassy in Mali, and in Myanmar a Canadian representative is housed in the British embassy.

If shared and pooled resources can work for two well-developed G7 countries like Britain and Canada that have global interests, there is surely value in the formula for small Caribbean countries to consider.

(Sir Ronald Sanders is a Consultant and former Caribbean diplomat. Responses and previous commentaries: www.sirronald sanders.com)

The dark tide of narcotics and crime

Narcotics trafficking through the Caribbean, and the associated criminality that accompanies it may be about to get worse. As those who produce and traffic narcotics into North America and Europe come under increasing pressure in Central America and Mexico, there is a serious danger that their activities will be displaced into the Caribbean.

In one of a number of recent reports on the issue the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has warned that there is a growing risk that the Caribbean could once again become the primary conduit for narcotics trafficking into the US.

The document, which mainly concentrates on Central America, also suggests that although Jamaica has declined as a location for cocaine shipments to Europe, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, the Dutch and French Caribbean plus Suriname, Guyana and French Guyana have become important conduits using, in some cases routes through West Africa. It observes too that as the interdiction success rate increases in Central America and Mexico, producers and traffickers have become extremely adept at rapidly re-routing shipments and at moving to other locations; a development often accompanied by significant levels of violence as contesting groups vie for control.

In this context, one particularly alarming development has been the revelation that the Mexico based Sinaloa Federation is now actively working in the Dominican Republic to establish a local presence and is developing Caribbean trafficking routes to Europe. According to US and Dominican Republic officials, the group’s members, who have been trying to establish new routes through Haiti, Puerto Rico and the Bahamas, have been looking at Hispaniola as a location to obtain precursor chemicals for the manufacture of synthetic drugs such as crystal meth and amphetamines, and have been seeking logistical support for drug flights from Venezuela. There has also been an associated upsurge in homicide and some evidence that Chinese organised crime syndicates may be seeking to work with Latin American groups there or elsewhere in the region.

Although the group’s footprint is presently small, experts suggest that this indicates that counter-narcotics programmes in Central America and Mexico may once again turn the Caribbean into an alternative corridor to those presently in use across and offshore of Central America. They are also concerned that the Sinaloa Federation would bring a dangerous and new element into both sides of Hispaniola in the form of extreme violence and an even greater ability to corrupt officials than the Venezuelan and Colombian gangs operating there at present. They believe that the Sinaloa Federation’s ultimate aim is to create new routes throughout the Caribbean into Puerto Rico for shipments to the US and through other locations to Europe.

For its part the Dominican Republic Government acknowledges the threat and is working closely with international agencies to address the problem.

At meetings in July in Santo Domingo between the US Secretary for Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano and the former Dominican President, Leonel Fernandez, they agreed to increase information sharing capabilities, strengthen aviation security and permit a wide range of other activities. In August the Dominican Government signed an agreement with Mexico that will help fight organised crime and terrorism and allow for information exchange in relation to corruption, people and narcotics trafficking and money laundering. It is also working closely with partner Governments in Europe on similar issues.

Haiti, however, remains particularly susceptible. The 2010 earthquake so badly damaged the country’s infrastructure that it declined as a location for transhipment, according to the wide ranging recent US Senate report ‘Preventing a Security Crisis in the Caribbean’. Now, however, Senators  suggest, drug traffickers may utilise the Republic’s newly rebuilt roads and points of entry to their own advantage. Haiti is also mentioned as one of three countries (including the Dominican Republic and Suriname) that do not have an agreement to extradite their own nationals to the United States.


So concerned has the Puerto Rican Government become by all of this that, giving evidence to the US Congressional sub-committee that produced the report, the Puerto Rican Governor, Luis Fortuno, called on US President Obama to create a Caribbean Border Initiative that encompassed the US territories as well as other regional nations. Such a strategy, he told the Senate committee in July, could improve the co-ordination of federal resources in the Caribbean and enable Puerto Rico to combat the rising levels of drug related violence in a country where 80 per cent of murders are drug related.

Tackling the multifaceted threat posed by narcotics trafficking and its allied activities is complicated. It needs a level of resource that no single Caribbean government has, and requires unusual levels of co-ordination and technology, given the geographically dispersed location of Caribbean states.

The US, Canada, the European Commission and individual EU governments including the UK, the Netherlands and France, are working with the region on a range of initiatives. These include: better co-ordination between command, communications and intelligence centres; better co-operation with the US territories; the use of advanced technology including the testing of drones; a new approach to naval co-ordination; better interagency co-operation; and improvements to the administration of justice and to prisons policy.

Counter narcotics activity is of course replete with paradoxes. Making the region more secure involves challenges to civil liberties and to traditional concepts of sovereignty. It almost certainly involves political trade-offs on unrelated issues and requires Governments to address the fact that there is an enemy within who may be ministers, officials or businesspeople in the pay of organised crime. There is also the consequence that displacement of trafficking or production from one area to another brings with it greater violence and crime and a need for developed nations to address their relative inaction when it come to the reduction of consumption.

Unfortunately, the Caribbean Basin is one of the global epicentres of production and distribution. Narcotics trafficking is a huge global business valued at around US$322 billion per annum now involving the employment of sophisticated technologies and skills. It has the capacity to dwarf whole economies and corrupt governments and legitimate business. It is self-regulated through extreme violence, and an approach when required, that corrupts and threatens.

What recent reports, statements and briefings suggest, when taken together, is that an economically weak region, now largely out of development assistance, may come to see a much darker and rising tide of narcotics-related violence and crime sweep across the region.

(David Jessop is the Director of the Caribbean Council and can be contacted at david.jessop@caribbean-council.org
Previous columns can be found at www. caribbean-council.org)

Toastmasters holding District 81 biannual conference in Grenada

“Connecting Borders, Together We Advance As Toastmasters” is the theme for the October biannual conference, which will be held in Grenada next week. 

District 81 Toastmasters, which is affiliated with Toastmasters International, will be holding its 20th biannual conference in Grenada. The conference, which is scheduled for October 19 to 21, 2012, will be held at the Grenada Grand Beach Resort.

Grenada will be hosting the conference for the first time and a variety of activities are scheduled for the duration of the conference. A statement from the organisers said that the three-day programme includes two speech contests, a banquet and awards ceremony, an island tour and a series of educational workshops focusing on communi-cation and leadership. Approximately 150 delegates are expected to attend.

Facilitators of the educational sessions include Region 8 (Southeast USA and the Caribbean) Director, Distinguished Toastmaster Rick Furbish; and District Governor, Distinguished Toastmaster Rolande Tobias. Mr. Timothy Antoine, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Finance, will deliver the keynote address at the opening ceremony on Friday, October 19 and Governor General, His Excellency Sir Carlyle Glean, will declare the conference open.

Toastmasters District 81 consists of a total of 2 160 Toastmaster members spread amongst 17 territories throughout the Caribbean. As part of its educational and fellowship initiatives, the District hosts two regional conferences every year (May and October).

Toastmasters International is a non-profit educational organisation that teaches public speaking and leadership skills through a worldwide network of clubs. (LS)

Carnival stakeholders

By Linda Straker

Carnival stakeholders are to meet on Saturday where they will contribute to a strategy for the development of carnival and at the same time conduct a post-mortem on the 2012 season.

Chief Executive Officer of the Spice Mas Corporation (SMC), Mrs. Jennifer Woodroffe, said that the process will include presentations and work groups. 

“We expect them to express concern about the 2012 event, but the most important is for them to contribute towards a strategy for moving forward,” she said.

The 2012 hosting of carnival was the first major event for the corporation who, according to law, is tasked with administrating and managing carnival in Grenada. The statutory body is expected within the next two years not to receive a subvention from Government as has occurred over the years and thus the stakeholders are expected to take that into consideration when developing the strategy.

A published financial statement from the SMC revealed that the Carnival 2012 did not realise a profit and instead the corporation has to deal with an almost $900 000 in debt.

Government is yet to provide the subvention owed to the corporation for 2012 and Woodroffe said that despite the outstanding, the management is hoping to finalise all prize monies before the end of 2012.

Youth encouraged to participate in innovation contest

Over 30 young people from Barbados got the opportunity to develop their entrepreneurial skills to aid them in preparation for the Caribbean Inno vation Challenge.

Valerie Lorena of the Young Americas Business Trust (YABT) has noted that the Caribbean Innovation Challenge (CIC) is an international entrepreneurship competition and business start-up accelerator for young people in the CARICOM Member and Associate States.  

The Caribbean Innovation Challenge was officially launched last week Tuesday at the FORO MIC conference, which was held at the Barbados Hilton Hotel.

“The CIC differentiates itself from other existing business model competitions by incorporating ‘before and after’ stages focusing on training and mentoring as preparation for the competition, and providing follow-up services that include access to finance, networking activities, internships and promotion opportunities, among others,” she noted.

Lorena explained that the CIC will consist of about two phases: 1) the “online semi-Finals” where teams will have to complete a concept paper, a business model, a prototype test, a Facebook group or blog, and a collage of promotional photos, videos or graphical presentations and; 2) “on-site finals” where teams that qualify will make their pitch in person to the judges present at the CIC Award competition.  

The finalists will also have the opportunity to showcase and promote their products or services at an international event that will include representatives from the private and public sectors, international and local organisations, financial institutions, among others.

Award challenges to be presented include “Best Social Entrepreneurs”, to be given to the team that develops an innovative project or idea that results in a positive social impact on others; “Best Economic Entrepre neurs”, to be presented to the team that creates a sustainable business opportunity for themselves or other people; and “Best Environmental Entrepre neurs”, to be presented to the team that develops an innovative project or idea that helps to solving environmental challenges.

Participants will have until December 2012 to get their entries in. 

More information can be gathered by visiting www.youthin-cic.net. (RSM)  

Tim Byam elected to serve

Former President of The Willie Redhead Foundation, Norris Mitchell,
handing over the reins to new President, Tim Byam.

OVER the years, the public who has been following the affairs of The Willie Redhead Foundation (TWRF) would have, for almost two decades, associated the work of the foundation with its President, Norris Mitchell, who has piloted the organisation over many troubled waters and has brought it to its present status.

The era of Norris Mitchell came to an end when at the foundation’s Annual General Meeting on September 12, 2012 the following officers were elected for the 2012-2015 term:

Tim Byam – President

James Finlay – Vice President

Georgiana Lawrence – Secretary

Cecil Edwards – Treasurer

The new executive held its first meeting of the foundation on Wednesday, September 26, 2012, and in handing over the baton to the new president, the view was expressed that care should be taken in running with the baton in order to ensure that this part of “the relay” would be no less significant than the former, bearing in mind that the challenges of the second decade in the 21st century would be of a different and perhaps more complex nature.

It is the hope that the new executive would approach the ongoing challenges with vision and a resolve in upholding the mantra of the foundation, that of the Preservation and Renewal of the National Heritage of Grenada. (LS)