Several of the Caribbean’s leading businessmen are calling on regional authorities to do more to help the private sector develop and expand.
In addition, Executive Chairman of Sandals Resorts International (SRI) Adam Stewart, Group Chief Executive Officer of ANSA McAL Group of Companies Anthony Sabga III and Chief Executive Officer of Goddard Enterprises Ltd Anthony Ali agreed that the time had come for diversification of regional economies.
Stewart insisted that while the region must diversify its earning potential the tourism sector should remain a critical plank and be used to “amplify” other sectors given its already far-reaching impact on regional economies.
“If you can find and have the success that Guyana had with oil then you are very blessed and lucky, but for the rest of us what we have is our rich culture, our incredibly beautiful beaches, the mountains, rivers, our people . . . and that has been our win,” he said.
Stewart, whose Sandals resorts hire more than 15,000 people across eight countries, said he believed authorities could do more to find the gaps in the linkages between the bread and butter tourism industry and other sectors and fix them.
“We are thinking about it wrong when we think about eliminating tourism. We should be thinking about amplifying all the industries around it . . . and we should be focused on import substitution and making sure that we are not importing products to the country that we can manufacturer locally and we can produce locally,” he said.
He also suggested that high taxes and duties were preventing operators in the tourism and hospitality industry from investing more in their transformation including in the area of renewable energy.
However, he conceded that the COVID-19 pandemic was a “great accelerator” that forced a number of companies and countries to advance their digitalisation process.
He was speaking recently as a panelist during the Central Bank of Barbados Caribbean Economic Forum, on the topic Transitioning the Private Sector.
“It really is about the framework, the ease in doing business and of course as we look to more foreign direct investment the foreigners are less passionate about the Caribbean generally speaking than we are, and ultimately to the degree that we can make them feel the Caribbean is a great place to invest through those framework then they will,” he said.
Sabga said he believed once attractive incentives were in place there would be greater investment in several areas including the critical renewable energy sector.
Pointing to advancements in related technology he said “as such the economic benefits and the returns are certainly there to attract the investments.
It is just finding the projects, the enabling environment and the capital will find itself there for sure”.
Sabga added that he was of the view that having a fully functioning CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME) would result in an ease in doing business, better policies and regulations, more research and innovation and technological infrastructure in the region.
Meanwhile, Ali also called on regional governments to make it easier for the private sector to invest while agreeing that tourism should remain a critical sector on which to depend.
“Governments in the Caribbean need to focus on policies, regulations and standardization and let the private sector do what it does best, which is invest capital, grow the economy and create opportunities for people,” said Ali.
“Tourism is naturally what most of our economies are based on, so the effect is we don’t to get rid of tourism. What we need to do is diversify the rest of the businesses to support what our natural resources are, which is tourism.
We need to focus on manufacturing within the region. We need to reduce our import bills and we really need to figure out how we can add to the core base that we already have,” he explained.
Ali also agreed that the region should move with haste to build out the renewable energy industry, pointing out that this would create jobs, help to lower the cost of living and improve the standard of living in the region.
(MM)
