TURKS AND CAICOS PUNCHING ABOVE ITS WEIGHT IN THE REGION

It can be useful, once in a while, to step back from day-to-day work and look at what we are trying to achieve against a wider background. I was able to do that for a couple of days in February when the Deputy Premier Akierra Missick and  I attended a “brain-storming session”, for want of a better description, with  40 leaders from government, business, civil society and the media in Kingston,  Jamaica. The conference was arranged by the Caribbean Policy Research Institute (CaPRI) and the Foreign Office’s Wilton Park, which analyses and advances global policy challenges.

The meeting  was a follow up to a  similar event in England last June. Coincidentally we had a dramatic and impressive boost to the conference on the second day, when one of the participants in last June’s conference, Andrew Holness,  was elected the next Prime Minister of Jamaica: a great indication of the influence of such events.

The conference last year had highlighted some of the challenges facing the Caribbean. These include a pressing need to review the structure of Public Services and dealing with “implementation deficit”, the necessity to move away from traditional relations with colonial partners, better inter-regional trade, dreadful connectivity, high levels of indebtedness, some of the highest energy costs globally, more creativity and risk taking, and better governance and law and order (the Caribbean has the highest rate of murders per capita in the world).

Fortunately, as our Deputy Premier and I had a chance to remind delegates this year, TCI is in a better place than others in the region on a number of these issues. Without risking smugness we can boast of a budget surplus over the last three years, the pay-off of the UK guaranteed loan, and significantly lower (but certainly not perfect) crime rates than many Caribbean countries. Our tourism figures were also the envy of many delegates.

We also have, which is still too unsung locally as well as in the region, our own airline, Inter-Caribbean,  offering increased connectivity. I reminded  the delegates that I had flown direct from Providenciales (TCI’s main tourist and business centre) to Kingston, could do so  seven days a week, and that  more routes to Cuba and across the region by TCI’s very own airline are being introduced shortly.

Inter-Caribbean, along with other flourishing TCI businesses such as the Do It Center  and The Wine Cellar, are some of the best examples of the sort of entrepreneurism that the CaPRI delegates were looking for in Kingston. We noted a good many barriers in the way of innovation, and among many ideas which we agreed to press for were better exchanges of information on alternative energy (an area where TCI is still lagging), far more sharing of financial services data, the encouragement of Public Private Partnerships, and developing new ways of measuring progress in the region. There were also suggestions for a new organisation to boost trade across the region. CaPRI has helpfully offered to try and co-ordinate follow-up in a number of these areas.

There was also a compelling  view  that existing organisations in the region are too English-speaking focused. We need  to take more account of the fact that well over  half of the region is made up of Spanish speakers: something for TCI to bear in mind in our tourism promotion, as the rapidly growing  links to Central and S America, as well as Cuba, demonstrate. Curiously, less attention was paid than I expected to the growing influence of some of the global powers, like China and Russia, in the region.

I’ll be interested to see how many of these ideas and proposals get traction over the next year across the region. All of the delegates showed great enthusiasm and conviction that they should. With one of last year’s participants, Andrew Holness,  now running one of the major Caribbean countries we can certainly expect to see change in Jamaica. Overall I was left with the sense that, given our very small population, we punch well above our weight in regional fora like this.