COMMON REGIONAL CURRENCY
COMMON REGIONAL CURRENCY
“And Jesus sat over against the treasury, and beheld how the people cast money into the treasury: and many that were rich cast in much†– Mark 12:41
Since its inception in October 2001, the Caribbean Media Exchange on Sustainable Tourism (CMEx) has become an ever-increasing source of confidence and pride for the Caribbean region (www.caribbeanmediaexchange.com).
Over the years many tourism linkage subjects e.g. agriculture, education, youth affairs, HIV/AIDS, health, accommodation, transportation, safety & security, natural disaster management and World cup cricket have been discussed.
So great has been the demand by country that a one day version (CMExpress) of the original four day model was introduced last year to increase the number of host countries that could be exposed in a given time frame and to allow a greater number of media personnel to participate in their home-based country.
CMEx events have been held in Ocho Rios, Montego Bay (2), Nassau, Barbados and St. Lucia. CMExPress type events have held in Kingston, Trinidad, Antigua and Santo Domingo. The New York event, last week, at the Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, was the first time that CMEx was mounted outside of the Caribbean region.
At this event, Allen Chastanet presented a brilliant and comprehensive compendium of issues on tourism, world cup cricket, CSME and the Diaspora, always giving solutions, some of which would be regarded by the thin-skinned as radical, to the many challenges which arise. Allen, runs two boutique hotels which are an integral part of the village tourism concept at Rodney Bay in St. Lucia. He is also on the Board of ICC WCC 2007.
In the morning, he fired up his audience but was equal to the task in his repartee. In the afternoon, participants engaged in interactive roundtable dialogue so as to go into each issue in more detail. The day ended with Andria Hall, former CNN anchor but now of S.P.E.A.K. Easy Media, exchanging ideas with participants about the mobilization of self in contributing to the development of the Caribbean and the Caribbean Diaspora. Andria’s advice was to seek to determine why you are here on earth, understand who you are and what you must to do. Then implement the ‘how’, ‘when’ and ‘where’. I had the honour to facilitate the day’s event. The next events on the radar are CMEx in Nassau Dec 08 -13, 2005 and Puerto Rico in February 2006. Counterpart International is grateful to all the sponsors which give ready support to the CMEx series. Please stay with us as we evolve towards sustainable tourism development.
Allen teased us! How can we make any progress when the policy advisors are ignorant about tourism? Do we have the supply capacity to adequately address the demand which will be extant at the world cup or will be it be a case of massive foreign exchange leakages, once again? Are we not the most over-managed region in the world and does this not cost a bomb? What does sovereignty mean without economic viability? Can the million Caribbean people in the Diaspora in the New York area not get together and influence the direction in which the Caribbean should move? What is this about a common currency with disparate exchange rates, rates of growth, GDPs per capita and large national debts? Allen concluded that we need a governance change immediately, if we are to survive.
Last week, I was asked to comment on CBC TV’s ‘Morning Barbados’ programme on the impact of a common Caribbean currency on the average Barbadian. I believe that this request was inspired by a report in the press attributed to the Governor of the Central Bank of Barbados to the effect that a common regional currency may be a way out of Barbados’ dilemma, given its commitment to full financial liberation and the constraints it faces in the process. The governor was credited in the same release with another statement as follows: ‘The issue here is getting everyone on board to achieve this. The idea would be to get the economies of the region to converge first, before we went to a single currency’.
I remember several years’ ago sitting on a panel with Dr Trevor Farrell, a Trinidadian economist, who espoused the view that any country can fix its exchange rate at any given point, provided that the country is able to support that exchange rate with the appropriate macro economic policies. My thesis is that if we fix an exchange rate for the common regional country, some of the countries in the region will not today be able to assemble and implement the appropriate package of macro economic policies needed to support the exchange rate. The conclusion is that there will be no common Caribbean currency in the foreseeable future.
If the private sector diligently, innovatively and aggressively addresses the challenge of enterprise development and if the governments provide a user-friendly enabling environment, then our economies could be gradually strengthened. Where does the Government get the money from? Be guided: ‘And Jesus sat over against the treasury, and beheld how the people cast money into the treasury: and many that were rich cast in much’. This could be the beginning of the mitigation of the wealth divide.