Regional industries need to be more competitive to drive economic growth, former British High Commissioner Fraser Wheeler has said, noting that tourism for instance has to stay abreast of changes.
Tourism is enormously important to the region, Wheeler said, but he questioned whether the product is evolving in keeping with global trends. “… It doesn’t operate in a vacuum, globally it is changing and the Caribbean needs to continue to evolve and keep up in the game”, Wheeler said in an interview with Stabroek News on Friday last prior to leaving Guyana for the UK. His term as High Commissioner has ended.
“Tourism is [very] competitive, but this region can keep up because of what it has to offer…the Caribbean is blessed”, Wheeler noted, pointing out that the region has to survive in an increasingly competitive environment.
He also addressed agriculture saying that the Caribbean’s food import bill is “massive” while the opportunities for indigenous agriculture are significant. Citing Guyana as a classic example where the scope for indigenous agriculture is huge, he said the region is yet to move in the direction of capitalizing on what this country has to offer in terms of agricultural development. Guyana, he said, has enormous lands to cultivate yet the regional food import bill is high.
Wheeler said basic logic dictates that Guyana should be the food basket of the region, noting that other opportunities exist across the region to develop agriculture. He called recent news out of Trinidad and Tobago relating to a renewed focus on its agriculture sector “great”. He also pointed to the local Texel sheep project which the British government helped Guyana to develop noting that it offers real opportunities within the region. Wheeler observed that the Caribbean imports around 30m pounds sterling worth of lamb every year from New Zealand and Australia when “the region is producing high quality lamb” in Guyana. He said the lamb from New Zealand is of a lesser quality.
But in addition to strengthening regional industries, he said, the region needs to adjust to the world trading environment and take advantage of new opportunities, particularly in light of the erosion of preferential treatment. Wheeler pointed to the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the European Union which had been met with some resistance here saying it offers real opportunities.
He acknowledged that Europe needs to build capacity in the region for countries to benefit from the EPA, but also emphasized that global trends are leaning to trade liberalization.
In another few months the UK government in collaboration with the Inter-American Development Bank and the Canadian government will initiate a new programme to build capacity for trade in the region with a focus on the private sector, according to Wheeler. He said Europe recognizes that some regional industries remain vulnerable and stressed that the EPA is based on an understanding of this.
According to Wheeler, the EPA offers great flexibility and it pays attention to the needs of the Caribbean. The agreement allows for continued protection for vulnerable and sensitive regional industries, he said, adding that some industries are completely excluded from the EPA while for others it is “a staggered adaptation, sometimes over fifteen years”.
The UK, he said, is focused now on more regional programmes because it feels the impact is greater. Wheeler said the problems facing the region tend to be much wider than the state themselves and he referred to climate change saying it would be “madness” to have a climate change programme for St. Kitts, Barbados, Guyana and Antigua separately because “the challenge is regional”. He said every country will benefit from the regional programme.
He recalled that President Bharat Jagdeo had recently expressed skepticism about the heightened focus on regional programmes as opposed to bilateral programmes. “While I can understand that from some examples in the past, this regional programme is not about hiring armies of consultants and studies, it is about making a difference on the ground”. Wheeler said. The UK contributes some 80m pounds sterling to the Caribbean region annually in aid with the majority concentrated on Caricom countries. There are additional programmes with smaller funding.
Wheeler said the UK-funded programmes are essentially focused on creating opportunities for economic growth in the Caribbean and looking at increasing competitiveness and getting the region in better shape to engage in trade as well as tackling crime, security and climate change.
Responding to a question about the ending of the EU sugar protocol under which countries like Guyana benefited significantly, he said current trends in the world trading environment point to the dismantling of protectionism and he argued that protectionism holds an economy back in addition to frustrating innovation. Wheeler stressed that Europe is helping the modernization of the sugar industry and is substantially funding this.
He admitted that Europe’s foreign relations are now more focused on growing markets in the emerging Asian economies saying they have strategic interests which have evolved over time. He added that many of the Asian economies are growing into major powers, but insists that Europe continues to have a solid relationship with the Caribbean region. “Our connections here remain strong, the Caribbean remains very important to us, in terms of development”.
With respect to Haiti, Wheeler said the UK has pumped significant resources into humanitarian aid for Haiti, but is now channeling all the reconstruction aid through the multilateral agencies, particularly the World Bank.
He said they are also maintaining interest on the ground as it relates to the reconstruction, particularly the efforts which are targeted at the poorest people in Haiti.