PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

The Caribbean is be­ing urged to place more em­pha­sis on cli­mate change re­silience and di­vers­fi­ca­tion away from tourism de­pen­dent economies.

These sug­ges­tions were among the de­vel­op­ment im­per­a­tives put for­ward by Ian Du­rant, di­rec­tor of eco­nom­ics at the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank (CDB) at its an­nu­al news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day at the Er­rol Bar­row Cen­tre for Cre­ative Imag­i­na­tion in Bar­ba­dos.

Du­rant said the re­gion had record­ed growth of 1.7 per cent in 2024, ex­clud­ing Guyana, whose eon­o­my ex­pand­ed by 43.5 per cent last year.

"Look­ing ahead, re­gion­al growth is ex­pect­ed to re­main mod­er­ate in 2025. Ex­clud­ing Guyana, the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank projects re­gion­al growth of 2.5 per cent, with per­for­mance vary­ing across bor­row­ing mem­ber coun­tries," said Du­rant, adding that Guyana's growth is ex­pect­ed to slow to 11.9 per cent, fol­low­ing its rapid growth in oil pro­duc­tion in 2024.

He said if all 19 bor­row­ing mem­ber coun­tries are in­clud­ed, the growth rate is ex­pect­ed to be 4.6 per cent.

"Among oth­er com­mod­i­ty ex­porters, growth is ex­pect­ed to gain mo­mem­tum, as they con­tin­ue to re­cov­er," said Du­rant, re­fer­ring to Suri­name and T&T.

Du­rant not­ed that while 15 coun­tries in the re­gion sur­passed pre-pan­dem­ic out­put lev­els, there were sev­er­al glob­al is­sues which could de­rail Caribbean economies.

"While the Caribbean re­gion is on track for con­tin­ued growth in 2025, there are sev­er­al risks that could al­ter this tra­jec­to­ry. In­ter­na­tion­al­ly, geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions along with the resur­gence of pro­tec­tion­ist poli­cies could el­e­vate un­cer­tain­ty in glob­al mar­kets, dis­rupt sup­ply chains and ex­ert up­ward pres­sure on com­mod­i­ty prices. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, pol­i­cy shifts in the Unit­ed States in­clud­ing evolv­ing pol­i­cy pri­or­i­ties add to the un­cer­tain­ty of the out­look," said Du­rant, who al­so not­ed that tourism had re­mained the key dri­ver of growth in some of the bank's mem­ber coun­tries.

"We must build re­silience to cli­mate change and nat­ur­al haz­ards. Hur­ri­cane Beryl's dev­as­ta­tion was a stark re­minder of our re­gion's fragili­ty. We must re­dou­ble ef­forts to cli­mate-proof in­fra­struc­ture, im­prove dis­as­ter pre­pared­ness and in­te­grate cli­mate con­sid­er­a­tions in­to every facet of de­vel­op­ment plan­ning," said Du­rant, "We must ad­dress our overde­pen­dence on tourism for for­eign ex­change earn­ings. Achiev­ing the nec­es­sary di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion re­quires us to build dy­nam­ic in­ter­na­tion­al­ly com­pet­i­tive economies."

Du­rant not­ed that while many mem­ber coun­tries had re­port­ed pri­ma­ry sur­plus­es, it had been large­ly due to in­creased tax rev­enue.

Ear­li­er in the meet­ing, Daniel Best, pres­i­dent of the CDB, al­so stressed the im­por­tance of be­com­ing cli­mate change re­silient. He stat­ed the Bank would sup­port plans for en­er­gy tran­si­tion and food se­cu­ri­ty in the re­gion as well.

"Sup­port­ing the en­er­gy tran­si­tion is crit­i­cal for us. We will fo­cus on de­liv­er­ing re­li­able sus­tain­able en­er­gy to the re­gion while pri­ori­tis­ing en­er­gy ac­cess for un­der­served com­mu­ni­ties.

"We must al­so de­vote our at­ten­tion to ad­dress­ing food se­cu­ri­ty. Look we saw first-hand dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic the risk to food se­cu­ri­ty as glob­al sup­ply chains were dis­rupt­ed, but this is an is­sue that the re­gion can ad­dress," said Best.

"We have to in­crease the scale, speed and ef­fec­tive­ness of cli­mate and dis­as­ter risk re­duc­tion fi­nanc­ing for our bor­row­ing mem­ber coun­tries. We can no longer be sur­prised when we are im­pact­ed by a nat­ur­al haz­ard event. Our re­gion is sev­en times more like­ly to be im­pact­ed by a nat­ur­al haz­ard event than an­oth­er coun­try," said the CDB pres­i­dent.