— Focus on two new initiatives for CARICOM Region
Analysis by Rickey Singh
A SIGNIFICANT partnership initiative between the Commonwealth Secretariat and the University of the West Indies is scheduled for three days later this week at the Mona Campus, starting on Wednesday, May 30. It would be a Symposium on Regional issues of much concern at this time for Caribbean Community states and territories and focused on: ‘Economic Transformation and Job Creation—New Governance Challenges’.
With unemployment within CARICOM ranging from an estimated low seven percent in the largely energy-based economy of Trinidad and Tobago, to at least 23 percent in some of the small tourism and agricultural economies of the Eastern Caribbean Region, the prospects for significant job creation in the near future are far from optimistic, according to public and private sector assessments.
More depressing is that joblessness among youth continues to be endemic across the Region with the Geneva-based International Labour Organisation (ILO) reporting just this past week (Wednesday) that “global youth unemployment remains stuck at crisis peak.”
Further, that the unemployment rate is rising sharply in the Latin American/Caribbean Region, standing at 14.3 per cent by the end of last year.
Flawed medium and long-term planning  and prevailing, yawning gaps in required integrated efforts by governments and the private sector for economic transformation have been fingered by critics of the models of development being pursued since the dawn of independence in this Region, first in Jamaica, and then Trinidad and Trinidad and Tobago half a century ago this coming August.
By coincidence, while representatives of the UWI and Commonwealth Secretariat were advancing arrangements for this week’s ‘Symposium on Economic Transformation and Job Creation’, the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) was last Thursday (May 24) inking a partnership accord with the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in the Cayman Islands for a ground-breaking initiative to spur Regional economic  growth.
The modalities of this tripartite initiative, known as the ‘Caribbean Growth Forum’ (CGF), are to take shape with invited Region-wide inputs from the public and private sectors, labour movement, civil society and Regional institutions and agencies, starting with a three-day event — also in Jamaica — from June 28-30.
Compared with Latin America, the Caribbean Region has generally been revealing poor economic performance, growing at an averaged 2.3 per cent compared with Latin America’s six per cent.
It is noteworthy that as the two primary pillars of our Regional economic integration movement, the UWI and the CDB  are ingtegrally involved at present in two separate international partnerships intended to stimulate economic growth  focused on job creation and expanding social benefits.

Moody’s shock for CDB
In the circumstances, it was perhaps ironical that on the eve of its signing the accord with the IDB and World Bank last Thursday, Moody’s Investors Service — the United States-based ratings agency — chose to downgrade the credit ratings of the Barbados-headquartered CDB.
That development would have come as a shock for those familiar with the policies, programmes and impressive performances of the CDB .
The ‘downgrading’ news came during the closing phase of its bank’s 42nd  annual Board of Governors meeting, and following, I  learnt, little more than a cursory discussion over the bank’s “liquidity policy” and an apparent unwillingness by Moody’s to objectively assess offered explanations on remedial measures.  An official statement is expected.
Nevertheless, the planned World Bank/IDB/CDB ‘Caribbean Growth Forum’ scheduled for Jamaica next month should benefit from the outcome of discussions and proposals for action to emerge from this week’s joint effort by the UWI and the Commonwealth Secretariat on Economic Transformation and Job Creation—New Governance Challenges.

The challenges
Invited participants for the Symposium have been informed that “the scourge of unemployment” has spawned many social ills, which are a familiar feature of Caribbean societies, namely:
Poverty, income disparities, crime, lack of faith in public institutions and the political systems of the Region” and, relatedly, unemployment, early pregnancy, HIV/AIDS, prostitution, human trafficking and domestic abuse…”
Yet, according to the organisers, the question of job creation and unemployment and their relationship to such social ills do not seem to “generate an appropriate sense of urgency in the Region… but will have to be addressed in order to ensure the stability, progress and health of Caribbean societies…”