St. Lucia Simply Beautiful

My advice to trade unions is that, as they change their role and re-vision their future, they should seek comfort in the following Daily Word advice: “Faith implies action to boldly step forward, move on, or stand strong, regardless of the challenge. If my faith wavers, I turn within in prayer. A brief reconnection with God brings me the assurance I need to continue on. I energize my faith through prayer and meditation, staying centred in the Power that is always with me, directing my steps. My faith is steady and strong”.

Some people have expressed amazement at the commitment to the task, which I regard as a compliment, but I see it merely as a discipline which is made easy by my many interests and the many activities in which I have been involved over the years. I am never short on ideas for the content of the next column.

The process began in 1998 at the Caribbean Development Bank where information was garnered on the constraints to enterprise development in 12 borrowing member countries of the bank. This resulted in the establishment of the Caribbean Business Enterprise Trust Inc. (CBET), a private sector led body in 2001. Three Central Banks in the region, five commercial banks, and the Office of Private Sector Relations in St Lucia funded the implementation of CBET which was financially self-sufficient up to 2008. At that time it was clear that the major constraint to the Model’s full development was the lack of a seed/equity fund for investment in enterprises, and the Barbados government was approached to assist with a process to test the efficacy of the Model.

I continued to interrogate with the twin question: “Do you agree that the ideal role of the media in any given society is to inform the general public on events and issues that affect them? If journalists are reporters who report the news, is it the editors who are to go beyond being placidly reactive (reporting the news) and adopt the role of being aggressively proactive (offering opinion to the general public on events and issues that affect them)?”

My new proposal, therefore, to stir the Caribbean governments into action, is for each and every one of us to pray that in each Caribbean country a leader(s) would emerge to introduce the public private partnership framework or revamp it along the lines suggested by the late Barbados Prime Minister, above.