Put your money where your mouth is.That is the challenge issued to authorities in Barbados and other Caribbean countries as well as leaders in Africa, as they continued high-level talks on the establishment of a direct airlink in an effort to increase tourism and trade and investment between the Caribbean and Africa.Herbert Krapa, Deputy Minister of International Trade in the Ministry of Trade and Industry of Ghana, warned that unless authorities address issues relating to business facilitation, tax and tariffs, and providing the necessary incentives for the private sector to invest, then the direct airlink would be nothing but a pipe dream.“The issue of logistics to ensure we have a dedicated carrier between our two regions is as crucial today as it should have been a couple of years ago,” said Krapa.“I think governments across the divide must put our money where our mouth is. We must make the right investments and provide the incentives, and the private sector, while government is making the investment into those areas, also needs to complement the capacity-building to ensure they see and seek opportunities,” he said.“We are not going to be able to do this [direct airlink] if we do not have a commercial case for it. The reason it has not been successful all these years is because there has not been a viable economic case for it. So we have to look at it from that standpoint,” he suggested.
