The Caribbean urgently needs major private sector investment to create jobs and economic opportunities for young people, says Executive Director of the Caribbean Export Development Agency Deodat Maharaj.
It is with this in mind that the region’s leading promotion and investment agency will be hosting a major Caribbean Investment Forum (CIF) early next month.
Maharaj told Barbados TODAY that it simply “cannot be business as usual” in the Caribbean if young people are to have more opportunities and significant progress is to be made in the areas of climate change mitigation and technological advancements.
“To do that, business has to play a central and important role. Business is an essential partner to help us advance a truly transformational agenda for our region, giving much-needed jobs and opportunities for our people,” he said.
“We can’t wait. Rome is burning in the context of the urgency of our economies for injections of capital to create jobs. Throughout the Caribbean, who is the largest employer? We know it is the state and that shouldn’t be the case and that is why we need investment, but investment in sectors that could drive transformation,” he added.
Maharaj said Caribbean Export was therefore excited about the November 8 to 11 CIF in Trinidad which is expected to be one of the largest face-to-face gatherings of business officials in the Caribbean since 2019.
The CIF is expected to bring together more than 400 regional and international investors, national promotion agencies, business operators and lawmakers, as officials seek to attract major investment to help build a greener and smarter Caribbean.
Maharaj said while governments have realised there was a need for greater partnership with the private sector, a critical piece of the puzzle was stimulating greater intra-regional and foreign direct investment in the region.
“The reason we need to do that is because Governments are already highly indebted and incurred additional debt because of the COVID-19 pandemic. We have limited fiscal space.
“So, where are we going to get the funding to create jobs and opportunities? It has to come from the private sector and it has to come from investment,” he stressed, adding that such investments should be injected into sectors that can drive economic and social transformation.
The CIF will focus on various sectors including agriculture technology, renewable energy and energy efficiency, the digital economy, transportation and logistics.
Noting that the development of those areas was not an option for the region at this point but an imperative, Maharaj promised that the CIF would not be just another talk shop.
He explained that the forum would see the participation of both businesspeople and lawmakers, and there would be investable projects and financial institutions on hand.
“We have segments of the programme where businesses will be making pitches to investors to get financing. We have hired a lead generation company to actually bring investors to the conference. So these are not just people coming to Port of Spain to listen to speeches. So the whole methodology and the whole approach of the investment forum is to create business and opportunities,” explained Maharaj.
He added that representatives from the 23 promotion investment agencies in CARIFORUM, Montserrat, Turks and Caicos and the Cayman Islands will have projects for potential investors who will be coming from across the globe.
According to Maharaj, there has been an overwhelming response from potential investors so far, from as far away as the Middle East.
During the wide-ranging interview with Barbados TODAY, Maharaj said he was most excited about the opportunities the green economy transition could afford the region.
He said one of the main drawbacks for regional economies when it comes to investment has been their small size. He explained that each territory going to the investment market alone was not as attractive as if they went together as a single region.
Maharaj said he was satisfied that officials were beginning to see things differently and were doing what was necessary to spur investment and encourage people to get involved in several areas of business.
He also pointed to the need for regional citizens to think more of agriculture as a business than simply farming.
Additionally, he said, the region had to improve the ease of doing business and regional firms taking advantage of the various economic partnership agreements and free trade agreements with larger markets.
“We don’t lack free trade agreements, we lack trade. The Caribbean has a beachhead to access those markets. We have to profile ourselves differently. Of course, there are challenges [including] issues of how long does it take to register a company to do business,” pointed out Maharaj.
