Prime Minister Mia Mottley on Tuesday outlined about 12 projects for public and private investment under a resilience plan worth about $22 billion over the next decade, including desalination, renewable energy and a data centre.
She told the Caribbean Investment Forum at Hilton Barbados Resort on Tuesday that the plan, worth about US$11bn, included a desalination plant, battery storage, photovoltaic plants, an aggregate facility at the port, a data centre for national and regional use and major real estate investments.
She said: “If we are to meet our debt trajectory and to anchor ourselves appropriately, then we need to be able to create the opportunities for others for investment in order to steady this country’s trajectory.”
The region needed to think much bigger about investment, as too many Caribbean people had innovative ideas but lacked the capacity to expand them, she said.
“There is no transformation without scale, we have a pleasant discussion, a veranda conversation, an opportunity to fill five minutes on a stage and move to the next level.”
The Prime Minister told the forum that the region could no longer rely on small-scale initiatives and discussions: “The Caribbean cannot move on this basis anymore. And I therefore welcome the fact that there are continued efforts by Caribbean Export to be able to create this opportunity to allow us to scale. But even as we are doing, if we are talking about green energy, and if we’re talking about digitalisation in the age of AI, then I regret to say that eight-figure figures, $20m and $30m will not cut it.
“And the question therefore is, at what point do we seize this moment and seek to see how we can truly supercharge?”
A major regional investment forum could not be satisfied with tens of millions of dollars: “That scale of distance, as with all due respect, cannot be $25m for a major regional investment forum,” she said. “It has to be $250m or $2.5bn and how we get there must be the vision that we leave here with. But vision, as we know, is not sufficient. And what therefore is needed is the plotting of that journey.”
Pointing to Caribbean innovations that had failed to generate significant financial returns for their creators or countries, the Prime Minister said the region had access to major sources of finance but lacked enough projects capable of attracting funding.
“More often than not, that is because of the absence of the discipline that I spoke about earlier, the discipline to master those things that will make a meaningful difference to being able to translate idea to project, project to actual investment.
“I leave here with the simple request that as I ask you to scale up your ambition, that you also hunker down and do those things that are necessary to create the discipline that will give us the ability to create that habit of success.”
But the Caribbean also had substantial capital of its own, Mottley suggested, citing the Central Bank governor’s estimates of regional bank deposit savings at about US$80bn ($160bn), much of it earning little interest.
Even redirecting two or five per cent of those savings towards investment would make a significant difference, she said.
She touted the joint Barbados-Guyana Trident Arrow Investment Fund which she expected to be established before the end of the year to give savers another option beyond traditional deposit rates.
She also expressed the hope that the region would achieve mutual recognition of corporate entities within the next year: “The ability to have mutual recognition of corporate entities within this region. It has taken far too long to happen. A large part of the delay has been as a result of COVID, but it is a basic, basic step [and] we know it means a lot to anybody who is participating in the economic activity of multiple islands.”
Mottley urged the region to use existing industries to support new investment: “I say so conscious that over $850m in tax incentives are awarded on an annual basis in Barbados.”
But links between tourism and other industries had not developed as quickly as the government wanted, she said.
Mottley pointed to the BEST programme during the COVID-19 pandemic, when government support helped hotels remain afloat, and said businesses benefiting from public funds should support other industries, including through training.
She also urged Caribbean businesses to look beyond traditional markets.
Mottley said the region had been exposed to export restrictions, including restrictions on natural gas after a hurricane struck Puerto Rico and restrictions on ventilators during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“These things create opportunities, and that is why I say that if we are going to be serious about expanding business and investment in this region, then it means us refocusing how we are going to get to scale, how we are going to accelerate, how are we going to leverage those larger industries, not just tourism, because they can equally come now to the oil and gas sector in Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago, and soon, Suriname, before you get to any of the rest of the other countries in the region, and to recognise that the output there of those sectors alone creates a platform base from which other money and other businesses can be sustained.
“I therefore ask us to look at the Caribbean as a joined up equation. We talk about it, and even when we talk about it, those institutions that most reflect it are those that are most beleaguered at the moment.”
Relying on one market for supplies left the Caribbean exposed, she said, suggesting that many businesspeople were also unaware of the opportunities available under CARICOM trade agreements with the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica and Colombia.
Businesses often remained within a familiar North Atlantic framework.
Mottley then challenged the Caribbean Development Bank to identify one or two areas where it could bring significant change, and said she would choose transport.
“Transport, transport, transport,” she said, pointing to logistics problems, delays in moving containers and the need for inter-island ferries for people unable to afford high airfares.
She asked delegates to send a “report card” on where policy had fallen short and where progress on the Caribbean Single Market and Economy needed to accelerate.
Mottley said the region also needed to develop a “habit of success”, without which “we are not likely to be able to meet the needs of the region because we become intimidated by the scale of the distance that we have to travel”.
(LG)
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