St. Lucia Simply Beautiful

Incidentally, here is a response to last week’s column: “I just read your article ‘Emerging from Chaos to Order’ and I wanted to say thank you for writing and sharing it. I have not been feeling so hot lately and I have been struggling to regain my footing on what seems like a slippery slope. As an overall optimist, I committed to the cause in which there may not be a place for me anymore. I cannot see where my parallel stream of order might be but nevertheless, I know that time reveals all things. I want to say that your words have held me in a warm comforting embrace when I needed it the most”.

Define job roles for each partner, including accountability – clearly define the tasks for all. From this, each partner can each be accountable to himself/herself, to each other and to the business. Where there are uncovered tasks, contract or hire a specialist. The objective is to make sure all jobs are covered and accountability has been assigned and acknowledged.

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.

“I have no doubt whatsoever about the great future that (Trinidad and Tobago) is going to have. I see in my vision a united Caribbean region and I see (Trinidad and Tobago) as the helm at the top leading the Caribbean region. It is a dream I have held since as a boy and it is a dream coming true.” – The late A.N.R. Robinson, former President and Prime Minister, Trinidad and Tobago (Trinidad and Tobago Newsday)

Last week it was reported in the press that the President of the Barbados Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Mr. Lalu Vaswani, said that the true state of the Barbados economy is not a rosy picture. He lamented Government’s lack of forthrightness on the economy and policies that could lead to lack of confidence as well as anxiety over the future of the exchange rate of the Barbados dollar. As a result he appealed to the Government, the trade union movement and other stakeholders to come together now to rescue the island.

Here are 12 instruments which may constitute a solution to the problem either individually or in combination: (1) corporate social responsibility grants; (2) sponsorship in return for publicity (3) crowd funding; (4) asset-based lending; (5) factoring of receivables; (6) retail bond markets; (7) public equity markets (local or foreign); (8) angel investors; (9) traditional venture capitalists; (10) benevolent seed/equity capitalist entities which allow the enterprise to buy-back the investors shares and regain ownership as close to 100% as is desired; (11) demand loans from friends and family who believe in the entrepreneurs and/or the enterprise; and (12) profits from “cash cow” subsidiaries of the primary enterprise activity. There may be other instruments.