Poor outlook for doing business across the Caribbean, says CDB president

GEORGETOWN, Guyana -- President of the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) Compton Bourne believes the outlook for doing business in the Caribbean is a very poor one as it takes “forever” to get the paperwork and regulations to set up a business in the region.

Addressing the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s (GCCI) annual awards and dinner presentation on Wednesday, Bourne says another challenge is the slothfulness of the court system in resolving business disputes.

He has called for authorities across the Caribbean to address these shortcomings, so that the environment for doing business can be more conducive and attractive.

Turing his attention to the global financial crisis and its impact on the Caribbean, Bourne said several sectors in the Caribbean have been severely hit by the crisis, including tourism trade and bauxite.

He also cited the decrease in foreign investment in the Caribbean as another effect of the crisis.

However, Bourne said the CDB will not sit idly by and allow the crisis to shrivel the regional economies as already it is responding to the challenges facing the region.

“We at the CDB have been doing our best to modify policies and provide assistance... we have reduced the counterpart funding required for countries seeking to borrow money from the CDB, we are currently making fuller use of our policy based loans which provide strategy support to countries." Bourne explained.

He added that the bank has also reduced the interest rates continuously to the clients of the bank.

The CDB president added that two major initiatives are on stream to assist indigenous banks and hotels affected by low visitor arrivals.

The CDB will provide liquidity support to some banks, particularly indigenous banks that are in some difficulty, and liquidity support to some hotels in the region that would normally be viable but whose vulnerability is threatened by fall in visitor arrivals.

December 5, 2009

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Cuba condemns attitude of the rich countries at the Rome Summit

ROME, November 16. — Cuba has condemned the attitude of the rich countries who were absent from the Heads of State or Government meeting at the FAO Food Security Summit taking place in this capital.

In a statement to PL, Ulises Rosales del Toro, head of the Cuban delegation in Rome and vice president of the Council of Ministers, highlighted the fact that those present must accept that food should not be used as an instrument of political pressure.

This is a battle that our country has waged for many years and which, on this occasion, has reached the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) Summit, he commented.

The importance of cooperation and solidarity was also reconfirmed, as was the need to abstain from adopting unilateral measures that do not comply with international law and endanger food security, he added.

Likewise a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of Cuba and minister of agriculture, Rosales del Toro criticized the absence of the world’s most powerful nations who do not appear to have the courage to face representatives of the developing countries.

Now they cannot justify themselves, he stated, referring to unfulfilled promises of aid in order to eradicate world hunger.

With respect to the validity of the FAO Summit, Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Abelardo Moreno stated that the issue is not to cancel the meeting but to highlight the attitude of the rich countries, which are not only responsible for the current situation but also for the global financial crisis. (PL)

Translated by Granma International

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Bahamas Blog Bahamas

Cuba's declining trade betrays depth of its crisis

By Marc Frank:

HAVANA, Cuba (Reuters) -- Business between Cuba and four of its top five trading partners has declined sharply this year in a reflection of the communist-led Caribbean island's deep economic crisis, trade reports from the countries said.

Reductions in exports to and imports from Cuba ranged from 20 percent to as high as 50 percent, according to the reports from China, Spain, Canada and the United States. In descending order, they are the top traders with Cuba after Venezuela.

Numbers were not available for Venezuela, which is the leading economic and political ally of Cuba's government and supplies the island with oil.

China, Cuba's second trading partner, reported that imports from the island fell 48.2percent to $368 million through August, while Chinese exports to Cuba dropped 12.7 percent to $641.9 million.

Spain, tied with Canada as the island's third biggest trading partner, said its exports to Cuba declined 43 percent to $394 million through July, while imports were down 24 percent to $91 million.

Canada, which did $1.4 billion in trade with Cuba last year, said exports plummeted 52.4 percent to $242 million through August and imports fell 55.7 percent to $283 million.

The United States, which is Cuba's fifth trading partner despite its 47-year-old trade embargo against the island, said sales to Cuba totaled $383.8 million through August, down 23 percent.

Most US exports to Cuba are agricultural products, which are permitted under an exemption to the embargo.

While no information was available from Venezuela, Cuba's close socialist ally, it is likely the value of its exports to the island -- mostly oil -- will fall dramatically from 2008's $5.3 billion due to lower oil prices.

Cuba's economy has been spiraling downward since last year when three damaging hurricanes raked the country, followed by the onset of the global financial crisis.

The combination of rising prices for its imports and declining value of its key exports also depleted cash reserves to the point that the government froze the local accounts of hundreds of foreign businesses and stopped or slowed payments to many foreign creditors.

Cuba's government has forecast a decline of $500 million in export revenues this year and slashed imports by 22.5 percent.

The island's trade deficit soared to $11.4 billion in 2008, up 65 percent, according to the National Statistics Office.

October 21, 2009

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CARICOM seeks voice in G20

GEORGETOWN, Guyana -- The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) would like a voice in the Group of 20 (G20). This was one of the issues raised by the Community’s Foreign Ministers during a meeting with United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in New York, USA last Friday 25 September.

Assistant Secretary-General at the CARICOM Secretariat for Foreign and Community Relations Ambassador Colin Granderson said that Secretary Clinton was informed of the concern by CARICOM countries of not having a presence in the Group of 20 (G20) global policy arena where many of the issues on the global economy are discussed and decided. He added that the concern of the Region was ‘taken on board”.

“It is believed that the views of vulnerable states with peculiarities such as ours need to be heard,” Granderson emphasised.

The latest meeting provided yet another opportunity for follow-up discussions arising from the meeting between CARICOM Heads of Government and United States President Barack Obama at the 5th Summit of the Americas in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago in April 2009 and a previous meeting between the Ministers and Secretary Clinton in Honduras in June during the Organisation of American States General Assembly.

Granderson revealed that discussions were dominated by the continuing global financial crisis and trade. With regards to the global financial crisis, the Region expressed continued concerns about accessing funds that developed countries had made available for developing countries to assist in offsetting some of the fall out from the financial crisis.

The Assistant Secretary-General said that it was stressed that the graduation of some CARICOM Member States to the level of middle income countries had made it quite challenging for them to access these much needed funds.

On the trade front, Granderson said the Region pressed home the point that it is anxious to meet with the US Trade Representative as there are several issues in this arena to be ironed out and on which the Region needed clarity.

The CARICOM Assistant Secretary-General also informed that developments on a planned Caribbean-US Regional Security Framework was also discussed. He informed that a Joint Working Group which was established earlier this year had already met and planned a second meeting in the coming weeks.

The Dominican Republic also participated in last week’s discussions.

October 1, 2009

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Bahamas Caribbean Blog International

Saint Vincent speaks out at UN debate on efforts to clamp down on tax havens

29 September 2009 – The efforts of major and industrialized economies to crack down on so-called tax havens are just an excuse to spread the blame for the global financial crisis on small nations’ legitimate attempts at development, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines told the General Assembly today.

Camillo M. Gonsalves, the Caribbean archipelago’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, told the sixth day of the Assembly’s high-level segment that is country faces “being stigmatized out of our transition into financial services” by the Group of Twenty (G20) major economies, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and what he called “other non-inclusive bodies.”

Speaking at UN Headquarters in New York, Mr. Gonsalves said the crackdown on tax havens were actually “a pathetic effort to cast a wide and indiscriminate net of blame across a swath of legitimate and well-regulated countries’ development efforts.

“We note the irony of these paternalistic prescriptions from the same countries that are unable to stem corruption and mismanagement within their own borders, where corporations recklessly squander trillions of dollars and a single buccaneer investor can make $50 billion disappear into thin air – an amount greater than the combined annual budget expenditures of the entire CARICOM [Caribbean Community] sub-region,” he said.

Mr. Gonsalves took aim at the G20 for describing itself last week, at a summit in the United States city of Pittsburgh, as the premier forum for international economic cooperation.

“Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is not a member of the G20, nor were we consulted on its ascension to the ranks of arbiters of our economic fate… The G20 faces a serious legitimacy problem: aside from being non-inclusive and unofficial, many of the countries at that table represent the champions of the financial and economic orthodoxies that led the world down the rabbit-hole to its current economic malaise.”

The Permanent Representative also cast doubt on recent reports from some observers that the economy is returning to normal.

“The invisible hand of the market is still clasped firmly around the throats of poor people and the developing countries of the world. We see none of the so-called ‘green shoots’ that populate the fantasies of discredited economic cheerleaders.

“Indeed, the seeds sown by this crisis may produce the strange and bitter fruit of increased poverty, suffering and social and political upheaval. The crisis itself, with its disproportionate impact on the poor, will only widen and deepen the yawning gap between developed and developing countries.”

UN News

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News Tracker: past stories on this issue:

Dominican Republic calls for tax on tax havens to fund UN humanitarian goals