A little earlier this month, the University of the West Indies’ Shridath Ramphal Centre published a policy paper that called for a new, integrated regional approach to post-COVID Caribbean economic recovery. It asked in effect whether the region should seek to re-embrace the ‘old normal’ or seek solutions to the existing and new economic challenges that the pandemic has highlighted.
The study, ‘Trading Our Way to Recovery During COVID-19: Recommendations for CARICOM Countries’ describes in its 96 pages the multiple and long overdue structural reforms that are needed if post COVID the Caribbean is to successfully recover and compete in what is likely to be a much changed world.
It represents, according to Neil Paul, the Ramphal Centre’s Director, the thoughts and analysis of young Caribbean researchers who are using the opportunity of COVID-19 to recommend new ways of confronting these topics in a Caribbean context.