Marshall outlines new development strategy

by Marlon Madden

Leaders in Barbados and other regional economies are being advised to “refashion” their development strategies to encourage economic growth and human development post COVID-19.

At the same time, Political Scientist Dr Don Marshall said the strategy should include negotiations with countries such as China, in an effort to access financing for certain projects.

Stating that COVID constituted an “economic emergency”, Marshall said leaders should not shy away from pursing models of development that would see state subsidies being a part of “a novel way of conducting ones public policy and industrial policy”.

He was speaking during the recent Sir Arthur Lewis Memorial Symposium, which was held virtually on the topic Beyond Linear Concepts of Development – Building Post-COVID Caribbean Sustainable Futures.

Stating that the region had reached a “crisis point” in its development since the start of the global health pandemic, Marshall said in some cases leaders were “persisting with dead ends” as they continued to engage in “a linear type of thinking when it comes to a sense of wellbeing and development of country”.

“We are at a point, however, with the COVID pandemic crisis that we currently face, where we have an opportunity to refashion our development strategies,” said Marshall.

He said the region now had the opportunity to invest in three key areas – food production, medicine, and alternate energy – in an effort
to drive down the high food import bill, costs related to the importation of medical supplies and the fuel import bill.

Adding that the areas of culture and maritime also presented tremendous opportunity for growth and development in the region, Marshall said the process called for each country “to play a more catalysing role and it will also call for a compatible industrial policy and return to a regionalism that has purpose, a regionalism that is based on production integration and the settlement along the line of food security”.

“We must adapt an industrial policy at the national level at the very least, ideally move on to a regionalised approach to economic recovery and renewal, and we must fashion new relationships with local capital and foreign capital,” he said.

Marshall suggested that China should be a country to look to for foreign capital, stating that unlike international financial institutions, China engaged in “patient lending” with long-term repayment schedules and did not “trespass” in the public policy of borrowing countries.

He explained that borrowing from multilateral agencies such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank often result in the limitation of countries to shape their public policy goals as they wished.

“Again, the central premise being that for countries in our region we need to facilitate private sector enterprise and growth.

“The notion that we have to depend on the neoliberal models of development to go forward is a mistaken one because of the different institutional and historical starting points,” said Marshall.

“So the notion that you will organise the society and the economy along the neoliberal precepts based on entrepreneurial freedom . . . ought to be checked against the fact that the sociology and history of the region does not support that premise.

“Therefore, the question would be how are you going to fashion development in the Caribbean if the neoliberal model is not the path to go? You would have to then look at the question of decolonisation and what that meant, and the role of the state in pursuing development.

“So whatever model of development you have to contemplate the state would have to play a leading role along with enlightened elements of the private sector and foreign capital. That is my recommendation,” said Marshall.

In fact, suggesting that welfare should be featured in any development strategy for the region, the SALISES Director said there was need for a new charter of human rights, which would address the issue of youth unemployment to help alleviate poverty.

He further suggested that this human right charter would ensure that no household would be operating “below a certain level of income”.

In addition to going after new source markets for tourism, Marshall also called on the region to engage in “fuller diversification” in order to expand the Caribbean’s capacity to become self-sustainable.

“This is where bargains with credit nations become very important,” said Marshall, who said there was need for two or three ferries “to run counterclockwise” in the region to transport goods across the region and one to transport goods to “newer markets such as Western Africa”.

In that regard, he said there was “a need as a region, to negotiate with the Chinese authorities, whether at the level of the state or state-owned enterprise or the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank”.