Barbados wants to preserve the region’s access to critical research and data as United Nations reforms could bring funding cuts and a possible merger for the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Foreign Minister Senator Christopher Sinckler has said.
He told Barbados TODAY that the UN was under pressure because of reduced resources and some countries failing to pay their contributions.
ECLAC had prepared a new strategic direction for the next three to five years, focusing on issues affecting the region, including debt, financial reform, climate change, resilience and artificial intelligence, he said.
Sinckler said: “The team has put together a new document which we can share with you on a new strategic direction for the next three years. Let’s see the five years, looking at the critical issues which countries in the region deal with: issues of debt, fiscal issues, financial reform, climate change, climate crisis, resilience, of course, AI, and the new shifting global geopolitics relative to tariffs, the tariff wars, the military conflicts.”
Sinckler said Prime Minister Mia Mottley, prominent economist Professor Keith Nurse, former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet and others served on a committee that shaped the commission’s new model.
“They sat on a committee that shaped that new model for ECLAC, taking into consideration the fact that it would have reduced resources to operate with, in terms of financial and human resources. But there will be cuts, and ECLAC could likely merge into something else when that entire UN process is completed. Our remit was to go through that, ensure that it met the needs of the Caribbean as the Latins would have done for their side, and to sign off on that.”
ECLAC had provided research and data to Caribbean countries for decades, benefiting the public and private sectors and civil society, he said.
“Research, especially at the empirical level, is costly, and not all countries have sufficient resources to expand on those things. ECLAC has been there for us over many decades, both private sector, public sector, and civil society, and so our thing is to ensure that it can continue.”
The commission’s work includes helping national statistical departments improve their ability to produce data used by policymakers and private sector investors.
Sinckler continued: “One of the major projects that ECLAC does is to work with countries to get their statistical departments up to the level where they can produce statistics. Data, that is, that policymakers and private sector investors and so forth rely on to make serious decisions.
“They have been leading that particular field especially in the Caribbean, working with our various respective statistical departments to ensure that the reformers get the new modern technologies and tools, and then the analytical work for those statistics.”
Sinckler said the region needed to be involved in decisions about the commission’s future to ensure its priorities were represented.
“In institutions, an individual view of what may be important or a group’s view of what may be important may not be what is important to us. So we have to be at the table to ensure that our agenda is there. We know what our issues are.
“They are built around resilience. How do we reform our economies to make them more resilient? Resilient in terms of financial resilience, resilient in terms of climate, resilient in terms of social issues- how do we address issues of non-communicable diseases, how do we address investment in education, transformation, healthcare, infrastructure. Those are the things which are important.”
He said ECLAC continued to provide data and analysis that Barbados and the wider Caribbean could rely on: “There are a number of agencies that we can rely on, but ECLAC has been consistent in producing credible data, credible analysis for Barbados and the Caribbean, and we know we can rely on them. And that’s why we’re there.”
(LG)
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