Resilience Key to Navigating Multitude of Challenges, CEF Panellists Say

Resilience emerged as a key talking point when the Central Bank of Barbados staged the March 2023 edition of the virtual Caribbean Economic Forum on Wednesday night.

This month’s theme was "Managing Caribbean Economies in an Era of Many Crises” and the panellists were Central Bank of Barbados Governor Dr. Kevin Greenidge, Gervase Warner, Chairman of the CARICOM Private Sector Organisation; and Geneva Oliverie, Development Specialist with the Caribbean Policy Development Centre.

While each panellist had a somewhat different view about how Caribbean countries could weather the multiple challenges they face, they all agreed that increased resilience is a must.

Dr. Greenidge said crisis after crisis has become the order of the day and therefore, countries individually and collectively must build resilience into everything they do.

One area which he said must be tackled is debt.

“One way of building resilience in your debt is to ensure that as you negotiate new debts for example, you build buffers. We [in Barbados] built into our debt natural disaster clauses and public health disaster clauses so that if you get hit by a natural disaster or public health disaster, within certain parameters, we can now postpone those debt payments, because we agreed already with the creditors. That, in Barbados’ case, frees up almost 80 to 90 percent of GDP that you can start rebuilding your economy while you wait for any other financing to come,” he said.

The Governor also highlighted the importance of building resilience into countries’ fiscal framework “where you minimise what is added to current expenditure and you do one-off capital expenditures.”

In good times you build your economy through your capital expenditure and you build buffers. So, in good times, you try to run fiscal surpluses that you can use to pay down debt”, he explained.

He also suggested the importance of food security, reducing wastage and inefficiency, and moving away from fossil fuels.

Meanwhile, Oliverie said the region must get out of its “permanent state of rebuilding” as a result of debt crises.

She said there’s a need to focus on growing our economies more and finding appropriate ways to fund resilience such as non-debt related financing.

“We need to take a look at our sustainable development model and find out if it is fit for purpose, if it still is relatable, if it is something that we should revise as we seek to move forward,” Oliverie suggested.

Giving a private sector perspective, Warner said resilience requires a lot more agility.

“I love our Caribbean people. I think we have just an amazing, amazing pool of talent and in many spheres, we end up punching well beyond our weight on the global scale,” he said.

He highlighted athletics, international beauty pageants, music, and industry as areas in which Caribbean countries excel.  

However, he said regional people are still an untapped resource.

“In the company that I am a part of, the Massy Group, we’ve realised that for us to be resilient, for us to be able to react to crises as they’re happening, we need to be far more agile. We need our people to be more empowered to make decisions. We need our people to know that we’re listening to them and we think they’ve got better information than we do and they can figure out how our companies should react with far more information than the executives and some ivory tower,” he said.

Warner also recommended making it easier for entrepreneurs to generate ideas, start businesses, access financing, and develop economies of scale.