“While it is true that the agenda is already set for the Port-of-Spain meeting I would hope that one of its outcomes would be the creation of ideas and recommendations that can go towards responding to the crisis facing the region,” Chintamani said.
And the GCCI President said that given the fact that the summit forum will be constrained by its agenda, Caribbean private sector bodies should move quickly to convene another forum to examine and posit solutions to the economic challenges facing the region at this time.
Meanwhile, Chintamani told Stabroek Business that he believed that regional governments must act with haste to begin to apply those measures that they have already agreed in response to the prevailing economic crisis.
Noting that the crisis “is already with us” Chintamani criticized what he said was often a ponderous bureaucratic process associated with the implementation of government programmes. He said that in the case of Guyana he was particularly concerned that promised state assistance to local farmers, particularly small farmers, materialize quickly.
Meanwhile, Chintamani told Stabroek Business that he believed that the pace of regional integration was being considerably slowed by the insularity of the various private sector bodies and the failure of governments to give real effect to the concept of the private sector as the engine of growth. “Private sector entities in the region are concerned, more or less about their individual territories and their individual businesses. That is a self-centred approach that is slowing the pace of regional integration,” Chintamani said.
The GCCI President also said that regional governments were guilty of not allowing the private sector to play a sufficiently meaningful role in deliberations and decision-making relating to strategies for the economic development of the region.
He said that he failed to see how the private sector could, on the one hand, be dubbed the engine of growth, while, on the other, it was less than fully involved in critical decision-making fora and processes relating to regional economic development.
According to Chintamani while the agenda for the private sector summit forum had already been set, the success of the forum would have to be measured by the extent to which regional private sector leaders emerge from their deliberations with proposals and ideas that can be applied quickly to the broader response to the crisis facing the region.
