SECRETARY-General of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), Mr. Edwin Carrington, has lauded the work of the late economist, Professor Dennis Pantin, 61, who died in Trinidad earlier this week after a long battle with cancer.
In a message of condolence to the University of the West Indies (UWI), Carrington acknowledged Pantin’s service to Caribbean development as a lecturer and a member of a group of CARICOM experts who were mandated by CARICOM leaders to develop a strategic plan for regional development, to give effect to a report on the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME), prepared by a team led by Professor Norman Girvan.
“Professor Pantin’s deep and abiding interest in the Caribbean condition led to his contributing a trove of articles on a variety of regional topics. Committed to demystifying his area of work, his language allowed for easy understanding of relatively complex issues.
“That Dennis Pantin has been taken away at this crucial stage of Caribbean development and the integration process, to which he had so much more to offer, makes his passing even more sorrowful,” the Secretary-General said.
A “tremendous loss” to the Caribbean, is how Girvan, a former Secretary-General of the Association of Caribbean States (ACS) has described the death of Pantin, who was a  former Chair of the Economics Department, and Coordinator of the Sustainable Economic Development Unit at UWI.
Girvan, who is now Professorial Research Fellow at the UWI Graduate Institute of International Relations, said Pantin was one of the most brilliant, original, and public-spirited economists to come out of the Caribbean region.
A date for his burial has not yet been announced.