WASHINGTON, CMC – A senior World Bank official said Wednesday that while several countries in the Caribbean have been very good at training workers who are very valued in other parts of the world, it puts a” little bit of a damper on that driver of growth”.
The Chief Economist for Latin America and the Caribbean, William Maloney, told reporters that “greater regional integration and trade is…a goal we should be pursuing”.
Presenting the World Bank’s latest Latin America and the Caribbean Economic Update, titled “Reconsidering Industrial Policy,” Maloney said greater regional integration and trade are “something that we’re… not particularly good at, either in South America or in the Caribbean.”
“You get the usual gains of scale, efficiency of disciplining your industries, all those things are good. The fact is that a huge part of trade is technology transfer and exposure to different ways of doing things, new products, and new technologies.
“And so, greater integration within the region can’t be the silver bullet for our growth issue. We have to be more integrated with the countries that have these new technologies and the like. ”
Maloney said that the Caribbean has reached a “certain level of integration”, but questioned “how much more they’re going to achieve in the next couple of years.
“I think there is a larger issue that we need to be thinking about with very mobile workforces and what kind of growth model we have. In terms of brain circulation, several Caribbean countries have been very good at training workers who are highly valued in other parts of the world.
“It’s not so much the trade issues, and maybe the movement in people. That puts a damper on that driver of growth. And I also think we need to think more, as countries, about how we make that…sustainable economically.
“It can’t be that we’re training workers for richer countries, and don’t get much out of it as a region. The other thing I’d suggest is we need to be thinking more in this context about services.”
Maloney said that by nature, the islands of the Caribbean are small in scale, “so we’re not going to have major manufacturing happening in most of the islands.
“But it is possible, given the internet and given the rise in services as part of the global economy, that the islands can serve as a basis for relatively small-scale, but very high-value-added service provision industries.
“And I think, particularly with English as a primary language in most of the region, that’s a real opportunity to be exploring,” Maloney told reporters.
According to the World Bank, The Bahamas will register growth of 2.2 percent this year, declining to 1.9 percent in 2027, while Barbados’ growth this year is 2.7 percent, increasing to 3 percent in 2027.
Belize will register economic growth of 2.4 percent this year, decreasing slightly to 2.2 percent in 2027, while Dominica’s growth of 2.8 percent this year will increase slightly to 2.9 percent the following year.
Grenada’s economic growth of 3.1 percent this year will decline slightly to 3 percent next year, while Guyana, with economic growth of 16.3 percent this year, will register 23.5 percent growth in 2027.
Haiti will grow by 0.6 percent this year, climbing to 1.9 percent next year, while Jamaica’s 1 percent economic decline this year will improve to 3.2 percent in 2027.
St. Lucia will register economic growth of 1.9 percent this year, declining slightly to 1.8 percent the following year. In comparison, St. Vincent and the Grenadines’ economic growth of three per cent this year will be bettered the following year, reaching 3.1 percent, and Suriname is also expected to register growth, moving from four per cent this year to 4.5 percent in 2027.
Trinidad and Tobago’s economic growth of 0.7 percent this year is expected to increase to 3.2 percent next year, according to the World Bank’s projections.
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