November 2012


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By participants’ accounts, the Caribbean Centre for Competitiveness (CCfC) successfully hosted the Caribbean’s first Competitiveness Forum on November 5-6th at the Hyatt Regency, Port of Spain.

“From a foreigner’s perspective,” said Melissa Marchand, Managing Director, Global News Matters, the CCfC has “put together a world class event. You have really started a new conversation… of our greatness, our boldness, our creativity and our leadership.”

“It is also a conversation of our responsibility in taking action if we want to see progress here in the region,” she said, really summarizing what CCfC sought to do: to create an independent solutions space for accepted competitiveness challenges. To have many participants echo positive sentiments validates the effort.

This forum was indeed a regional event, with participation from all four of the UWI campuses, regional businesses (large and small), policy makers and multilateral institutions.

Operating from the premise that to get new outcomes we must do things differently, the CCfC infused interactive clinics into the process. This drastically changed the rules of engagement for participants from passive observers and listeners to active discussants. This experiment proved tremendously effective and the practical recommendations coming from this will find their way into the post forum agenda which the CCfC has committed to take to the level of implementation, by working with relevant partner stakeholders.

Keynote speaker was UK entrepreneur Alex Pratt, holder of the Queen’s Lifetime Award for business and the author of “Austerity Business: 39 tips for Doing More with Less.” Pratt’s lessons strongly resonated with participants. He started as an entrepreneur at the age of seven when his longed for toy was stolen. Instead of playing victim, he set out to earn the money to replace it. By his 20s he was a millionaire.

Pratt dismissed the region’s “victimhood” mindset and challenged us to adopt a solution’s attitude. “If school kids today can make millions from their bedrooms in the face of daunting global competition, then the Caribbean can win in world markets….If Jamaica can foster the fastest men the world has ever seen, then it can foster more economic winners from its enterprising people. If Singapore can top the world competitiveness league, then so too could Barbados or Trinidad and Tobago.” “In the connected age, small is the new black. It’s time to unleash a more colourful, prosperous and competitive future (for the Caribbean),” was his parting shot.

Vice-Chancellor of The UWI, Professor Nigel Harris, noted that an increasingly borderless world both simplifies and complicates development, creating challenges and opportunities for all countries, regardless of size and statue. He acknowledged that the University must provide practical solutions by responding to emerging needs with international best practices and cutting edge solutions. He believes that the CCfC will become a regional centre of excellence actively involved in applied research, building market-driven technical capacity in innovation and competitiveness tools and techniques, and working with the private and public sector to meet their competitiveness needs. This forum was one such response by the CCfC.

The region has hosted conferences with great presentations as par for the course, but with little follow-up action. We can no longer afford talk for its own sake. It is time for action. The clock is running ahead of the region. It is not about how we articulate commitment to improving competitiveness, but how fast we actually improve our competitiveness. Every country in the world is in this race, many already ahead of the curve. The imperative for the region is to move from rhetoric to implementation. As the CCfC moves this agenda along, it looks to the support of all major stakeholders; private, public, academia. There is no quick fix; the requisite market analysis must be done upon which competitiveness strategies must be built. This is where the CCfC will play the strongest role.

Along with the Vice-Chancellor, speakers at the formal opening of the forum included Senator Larry Howai, Minister of Finance and the Economy, Trinidad and Tobago; UWI’s Pro Vice-Chancellor, Planning and Development & Chairman of the CCfC, Professor Andrew Downes; Pro Vice-Chancellor and Campus Principal, UWI St. Augustine, Professor Clement Sankat; Ambassador Arthur Snell of the British High Commission; Ms Louise Clement, Head of the Canadian International Development Agency (Caribbean); Ms. Flora Montealegre Painter, Chief of the Competitiveness, Technology and Innovation Division, Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and Mrs Arlene McComie, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Planning and Sustainable Development, Trinidad and Tobago. CCfC hosted 200 participants in a massive brainstorming event on solutions to key competitiveness challenges facing the region, with emphasis on debottlenecking access to financing and the Internationalization of SMEs.

Amongst invited guests were the Central Bank Governor of Trinidad and Tobago, Mr Jwala Rambarran, members and representatives from the diplomatic corps of Germany, USA, Japan, Mexico, and People’s Republic of China.

Indera Sagewan-Alli is Executive Director of the Caribbean Centre for Competitiveness. For more information, please visit the website at http://uwi.edu/ccfc.