In pursuit of the optimization of the ‘openings’ that continue to materialize for investment in the Caribbean, Caribbean Export is currently busying itself with plans to stage this year’s October 23-25 Caribbean Investment Forum (CIF) in the Bahamas. The choice of the CARICOM member country’s Atlantis Paradise Island as the location for the two-day event is a dead giveaway, the idyllic location sending a message that Caribbean Export will be ‘pulling out the stops’ to ensure that potential investors from outside the region with ‘deep pockets’ seize the opportunity to assess the region’s investment prospects.
While Caribbean Export says that part of its objective is to enhance the longer-term value of the Caribbean region as a visitor destination, its priority assignment, it says, is to attract targeted investments in four fields that are of critical strategic importance to the region, namely, the digital economy, agricultural technology renewable energy, and transportation and logistics. Each of these fields holds an important strategic importance given the ‘shape’ of the country’s development profile. Caribbean Export says that another objective of the event is to “enhance the visibility of the region and the host country as attractive investment destinations”.
The October Caribbean Investment Forum is seeking to build on a pre-existing marked extra-regional interest in the investment prospects that now obtain in the region, prospects illuminated by the potential opportunities that have opened up on account of the major oil finds offshore Guyana. Carib-bean Export will be hoping that the October event will draw support from recent preceding investment ‘excursions’ into the region. While it is Guyana’s fossil fuel resources that have attracted much of the extra-regional visitor attention to the region this year, the Caribbean Export forum will reportedly be centred on the theme of “building a SMARTer, GREENer Carib-bean.”
One of the priorities of the forum, the Caribbean Export release says, will be to optimize opportunities for networking and collaboration, bringing investors from both inside and outside the Caribbean, together, in order to fashion a convivial environment between investors inside and outside of the region in which to generate business deals in sectors that are key to the needs and interests of the region. “The primary focus is to create a platform for businesses to engage with one another and foster new business opportunities,” the Caribbean Export release said, adding that “the event serves as the foremost platform for attracting investments in the region, offering an opportunity to showcase the Caribbean as an appealing investment destination with the potential to drive transformative growth.
The CIF is distinguished by its exclusive focus on investment, with the primary aim of attracting business persons from the region and carefully screened investors from around the world who are interested in participating and contributing to the event.” Caribbean Export’s partners in the hosting of the forum will include the European Union, the Caribbean Community and the Bahamas’ Ministry of Tourism, Investment and Aviation.
