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Global financial crisis will hurt regional economies

Dec 13, 2008 News

– Dr Carrington

The global economic situation is the backdrop against which the region and the world at large are ending the year, with serious impacts for the Caribbean’s tourism sector.
This is according to Head of the Caricom Secretariat, Dr. Edwin Carrington, who told the local and regional media on Thursday that the current financial situation is ‘very serious,’ adding that this is perhaps the most serious crisis since the 1930’s great recession and depression.
“We are not going to escape the impact, but the question is: ‘How can we minimise it?’ “
He added that there have been discussions on the issue at the Heads of Government level, pointing out that, as recent as Monday, the matter was discussed in Cuba, where a number of Caribbean leaders met.
“Because of the financial downturn, and even before this, the international environment has not been particularly attractive. WTO has not yielded much fruit for us.”
The Heads of Government, he added, had a special one-day meeting in July on the region’s tourism sector, and already there is an established taskforce on the development of a regional tourism sector.
Part of the role of that task force is to design a regional marketing plan for a ‘Caribbean brand’ of tourism. This is expected to be unveiled on the international market as a way of attracting greater support in that area.
“The overall economic downturn can have some serious negative impacts on our tourism sector. So we need all the more urgently to more attractively prepare a brand which would tend to help offset what we expect to be a diminution in the tourism sector in our region,” Dr. Carrington said.
It was explained that the ‘Caribbean brand’ will be packaged in a way to provide greater reach for national brands within the region.
This mechanism is not to have greater competition among Member States, but rather to sell the region as one to attract more tourists.
Addressing the issue of transportation within the region, Ambassador Irwin La Rocque said that there was a meeting, earlier in the year, where ministers from various Caricom countries addressed a number of issues to deal with the rising cost of transportation in the Caribbean.
“We are about to conduct a feasibility study on a fast ferry service that would cover the Southern Caribbean. That study will be starting in January and concluding some time around March.”
This, he said, is being done with the view of actually putting in place a service that would start from Suriname to Guyana, then to Trinidad and Tobago, and go up as far as St. Lucia.
“We are also working on advancing “the open skies agreement” within Caricom to make it more compliant with the CSME…There is an agreement at present, but it is not compliant, and not all Caricom Member States are in place.”
Ambassador La Rocque added that next year, mechanisms to regulate the safety of the region’s skies will be put in place. All the recent measures would seek to address some of the concerns of transportation in the community, he added.
Commenting on the transportation issue within the region, Secretary General Dr. Carrington said that there is a difficult intra-regional transport problem.
“We have not yet been able to resolve the issues. There are problems of costs, there are problems of availability, and there are problems of efficiency. But we are working on resolving these,” Dr. Carrington said.

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