DEEPENING ECONOMIC integration in the Caribbean Community makes necessary firm enlightened policies for intra-regional partnership projects, based on utilisation of the natural and human resources of the cooperating countries.
This is particularly relevant in developing the vital agriculture and energy sectors. The CARICOM states that readily come to mind for such ventures would be Guyana and Belize — in relation to food production — and Trinidad and Tobago, whose economy largely revolves around oil and natural gas resources.
It is, therefore, encouraging to know that the first meeting in Port-of-Spain last week between Trinidad and Tobago’s new Prime Minister, Kamla Persad-Bissessar and President Bharrat Jagdeo resulted in a pledged commitment to explore partnership projects in food production, involving this country’s huge agricultural potential, and that twin-island state’s energy resources in the construction of an aluminium smelter possibly located in Guyana.
Last week’s preliminary discussion about the prospects for partnership projects is expected to be followed up between President Jagdeo and Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar when they meet at next week’s CARICOM Summit in Montego Bay, and subsequently pursued at technical and ministerial levels for appropriate actions.
Of course, Guyana and, to a lesser extent, Belize had years ago been identified as key states by both the late Prime Minister Eric Williams as well as that doyen of West Indian economists, the late William Demas, for breaking this region’s heavy dependence on foreign imports of food and beverages.
Williams’ idea of a Caribbean Food Corporation, as well as his suggestion of the construction of an aluminium smelter in Trinidad, utilising his country’s natural gas resources and bauxite from Guyana and Jamaica, were to be discussed, on and off, long before CARICOM had progressed to the stage of making arrangements for a single market, and later evolve a single economy.
Regrettably, while some advancement was made in the initial phase of a food corporation project, it was not sustained, and the region’s dependence on food imports kept rising to a current level of approximately US$5 Billion.
Nevertheless, within recent years, fresh efforts were made for making the region’s agricultural sector a key segment for regional economic development, and President Jagdeo has been carrying lead portfolio responsibility for this programme as CARICOM continues to encourage development towards a seamless regional economy.
So far as the aluminium smelter is concerned, this has emerged as an even more complex problem in the face of opposition by environmentalists in Trinidad to the smelter plant’s location in La Brea, plus doubts about Jamaica’s renewed interest, at this time, in such a project.
For its part, Guyana is currently involved in various initiatives, including securing hydro-electricity, with eyes on an aluminium smelter in the context of an expanded industrialisation programme.
What is quite encouraging is that the governments of both Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago have accepted that their respective private sector should be among the major stakeholders in the envisaged regional partnership projects, even beyond food production and marketing, and the establishment of an aluminium smelter.