by Bennette Roach
Presenters, participants at CGF HLTT in St. Kitts (2nd left seated: K. Lee; stooping B. Roach)
Norman Cassell, businessman, Kenya Lee from the Ministry of Finance and Bennette Roach, Managing Director of Montserrat Printing and Publishing Inc., publisher of The Montserrat Reporter were participants at a Caribbean Growth Forum training workshop.
(left) Norman Cassell
The two-day, June 12-13, 2014 was broadly sponsored jointly by World Bank, IDB and Caribbean Development Bank (CDB). The CGF is operated under a program, Compete Caribbean, jointly funded by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the United Kingdom Department for International Development (DFID) and the Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Canada (DFATD), supports projects in 15 Caribbean countries.
The program’s estimated value is US$40.0 million, of which the United Kingdom’s DFID; and Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development, Canada (DFATD) contributed US$32.55 million. Projects in the OECS countries are implemented in partnership with the Caribbean Development Bank.
Bennette Roach (me) responded to ZJB Radio’s question on something that he took away from the training workshop, which he said was very intense and instructional.
Kenneth-Foe–A-Man-Asst-Dir Competitiveness Unit, Suriname
This editor in his capacity as representing the MCCI (Montserrat Chamber of Commerce and Industry) reported that much of the discourse at the CGF High Level Technical Training (HLTT) was about the dialogue that should exist between government and private sector.
“In Montserrat the framework exists, (as reported during the training), but unfortunately it is not practiced. The initiatives that came out from that training is how the private sector really understands, that as badly off as Montserrat is there are other islands that are not that worse off than we are, but because we are really just so inactive that nothing is happening. We really need to get the organizations going. We need to get that going; we need to be in a position to really hold the government accountable, be in a position to inform and be informed about what goes on because indeed the government will always be talking about ‘we can’t do anything without the private sector’. But if the private sector is not taking up the initiative to do something then really nothing has happened and if you want to understand part of why we (the economy)are stagnant, that’s part of it.”
I ask: “…now, should government be reaching out? Yes I think so because if they don’t reach out and nothing happens there’ll be no success for government either.”
“Just talking about MDC for example; how much does the private sector participate in MDC? Is the private sector represented? How are they represented?”
“…and the MDC should not just be about the government, it should be about the government and people and what do we have? Just government. So every time something happens you get a quick thing from the government saying this person is coming to do a survey of something. Somebody (MCCI) calls a meeting and the meeting is attended by one or two persons. This is so because the private sector body is not functioning.”
For the benefit in particular of the private sector in Montserrat:
Compete Caribbean is a private sector development program that provides technical assistance grants and investment funding to support productive development policies, business climate reforms, clustering initiatives and Small and Medium Size Enterprise (SME) development activities in the Caribbean region.
The Caribbean Growth Forum (CGF) initiative is born of a desire to establish a space for engaging political, business, academic, youth and other leaders of society to shape the Caribbean regional agenda.
The initiative is aimed at identifying practical and implementable policies and activities to induce growth and create jobs in the Caribbean region through analytical work, knowledge exchange and inclusive dialogue.
Again, it is led by the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), Inter-American Development and the World Bank (WB) in collaboration with the United Kingdom Agency for International Development (DFID) and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).
