Errol MillerRECENTLY THERE was a conference in England on the Future of the Caribbean. David Jessop, Executive Director of the Caribbean Council for Europe, writing in his column on the Week In Europe in another newspaper, made the observation that some of the indications coming out of that conference were that:
Europe was interested but not too
interested in the Caribbean.
Increasingly Europe will treat the Caribbean as part of Latin America.
The United States seemed more concerned about security than development in the region.
The days of preferential trade agreements are at an end.
To a substantial degree, I concur with Mr. Jessop's conclusions. Indeed, to some of us from the Caribbean attending the conference it would appear that to the Europeans we should consider ourselves fortunate that they are showing any interest in us at all, and that the American position was that we should be eternally grateful for any assistance given on whatever grounds. It would be difficult to come away from that conference without the feeling that the Caribbean may be generally unaware of the extent to which we are really on our own, notwithstanding all the diplomatic rhetoric to the contrary from Europe, North America and Latin America.
In this regard I was particularly intrigued by the discussion in one of the sessions in which the point was made that Caribbean countries that had followed a fixed exchange rate over the last twenty years were in better economic shape than those that had adopted the floating exchange rate policies that had been advocated by the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank and the Washington Consensus generally. The countries that have retained fixed exchange rates have been Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Cayman Islands, and the nine countries of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States. Countries that have had floating exchange rates have been Guyana, Jamaica, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago. The fact that Trinidad and Tobago is in a better economic position than the other three appear to be related more to their fortune in having supplies of gas and oil than to any better management of the monetary policies.
Even more intriguing was the fact that faced with this evidence and supporting arguments IMF personnel conceded that it could well be that size of economy may well be a factor in the successful application of floating exchange rate policies, and that given the small sizes of Caribbean economies it was a disastrous course to have taken. I was heartened that the IMF personnel accepted that the latter had to bear some responsibility for the debacle that now confronts these countries that have followed the IMF policy prescriptions and conditionalities. The extent to which this will translate into changed IMF policies and approaches is still left to be seen. In any case, it would appear that the taxpayers of these countries have been left holding the bill and the bag.
More to the point is the fact that we in Jamaica do not appear to have learned anything from our sister countries in the Caribbean. From all appearances we are in another round of devaluation. The only difference that may exist between the Government and their international backers in the IMF, the World Bank and the IBD is the pace and timing of the decline. The question is, based on the experiences of the last twenty years, why should we expect that this round of devaluation of the currency would lead to any different outcomes than before? Do we not relate the present state of discontentment and the high crime rate to the policies that have been pursued over the last twenty years? Should we not abandon these failed monetary policies and take account of the lessons learned from our sister countries in the Caribbean?
One of the clear differences I have noted between Jamaica and the rest of the Commonwealth Caribbean is that the latter use Caribbean consultants and experts to a far greater degree than Jamaica. Whenever the Jamaican authorities, private and public, decide to draw on expertise from outside they invariably go to North America and Europe and hardly turn to expertise from the Caribbean. I am in no doubt that this accounts for some of the problems we are faced with because the advice given and followed invariably have little or no grounding in Caribbean realities.
I welcome the fact that investors from the rest of the region are now taking over Jamaican companies. At least through the mechanism of the market the private sector is learning from the rest of the Caribbean. Hopefully, the Government and the public sector will begin to acknowledge and utilise the collective knowledge and wisdom that resides in the Caribbean. The fact is that our future resides together.
Errol Miller is Professor and head of the Institute of Education, UWI, Mona.
