Caricom business leaders have been called on by the heads of government of Guyana and Barbados to invest more in the region to help it become more sustainable.
Dr Irfaan Ali and Mia Mottley raised the issue during discussions to reduce the Caricom import bill by 25 per cent by 2025 with private sector members at The Brix, St Ann's on Friday evening.
"We have to be able to put forward credible opportunities, and to ensure that we can secure the stability and then the prosperity for our region in a very uncertain world," Mottley said.
She said this was possible through import substitution and the mobilisation of capital, which will be addressed at the end of the month at a meeting of Caricom finance ministers.
"And hopefully, we can get a pathway to take in something that was literally laid on the books of Caricom Secretariat for more than a decade. Secondly, we need to be able to make sure that the US$100 billion in savings that exists in this region, now US$50 billion to private companies and the rest in the non-bank financial institutions, that we can find instruments to allow us to unlock that. Because with all due respect, there has to be diversity in terms of investment, and not just allowing our money to work through patient interest rates and savings."
Mottley said she plans to have Barbados move away from being known strictly for sugar and has determined to use renewable energy to stabilise a number of sectors.
"One of them, of course, is agriculture. Largely because unlike Trinidad and like Guyana, we do not have the benefit of the scale of production. But we need still to maintain a rural and ecological society if we are to keep our society stable. As a result, we, therefore, have to be able to look after not only our people, but create an export market. And we need to marry that opportunity with the logistics opportunity that God gave us when he put us where he did, geographically."
Ali also touched on the importance of investments. "I want us today to spend a few moments understanding the big picture and how to position your investment in line with the bigger picture, opportunities that will be created as a result of the opening up of the economy, expenditure, years of transformation, and doing the comparative advantage of all sectors. So that is what we're doing in a nutshell, in fact, to do the comparative advantage of all the sectors," he said.
Ali said part of Guyana's development includes building a new city - Silica City - which is the goal beyond the 2025 benchmark.
"We're looking for practical things, things that meet the development aspirations of our people, we're not going to build 100 flyovers, we do not need 100 flyovers, so we have made it very clear. In addition to this, we are very interested in Silica City. Now, why Silica City? As you know, 80 per cent of our population live on the coast. So we are building a new city that will be sustainable. This city will have a lot of different characteristics than the existing cities and cities as we know."
He said anothe
