GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

T&T’s decades-long com­mit­ment to Cari­com as a ve­hi­cle for eco­nom­ic growth is be­ing sharply re­assessed by econ­o­mist Dr Vanus James, who says the coun­try’s in­te­gra­tion strat­e­gy—built on ex­pand­ing re­gion­al mar­kets for man­u­fac­tur­ing—has not de­liv­ered the ex­pect­ed re­sults and now re­quires ur­gent re­think­ing.

Long re­gard­ed as one of the bloc’s strongest pro­po­nents, T&T has his­tor­i­cal­ly cham­pi­oned deep­er re­gion­al ties, po­si­tion­ing it­self as a man­u­fac­tur­ing and en­er­gy hub sup­ply­ing goods across Cari­com, while sup­port­ing the de­vel­op­ment of the Caribbean Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, James ar­gued that this mod­el rests on out­dat­ed as­sump­tions about small states.

“Carif­ta, Cari­com and the CSME were re­con­struct­ed on a mar­ket en­large­ment prin­ci­ple,” he said, ex­plain­ing that pol­i­cy­mak­ers be­lieved small states could on­ly suc­ceed by com­bin­ing in­to a larg­er eco­nom­ic space.

How­ev­er, James said that as­sump­tion has not held up un­der scruti­ny. Draw­ing on his­tor­i­cal analy­sis and cur­rent da­ta, he con­tend­ed that the re­gion’s push in­to light man­u­fac­tur­ing as a de­vel­op­ment strat­e­gy has failed to de­liv­er mean­ing­ful trans­for­ma­tion. “Not one Cari­com mem­ber state has been able to use light man­u­fac­tur­ing to build a de­vel­oped econ­o­my over the six decades since we launched the re-in­te­gra­tion ef­fort,” he stat­ed.

Us­ing T&T as a clear ex­am­ple, James point­ed to ev­i­dence show­ing the sec­tor’s lim­it­ed val­ue.

“Light man­u­fac­tur­ing pro­vides mean month­ly in­comes about 16 per cent be­low the av­er­age of work­ers who are em­ployed else­where,” he said, adding that this re­flects “low pro­duc­tiv­i­ty at the mar­gin” and weak in­no­va­tion ca­pac­i­ty.

That re­al­i­ty, he ar­gued, di­rect­ly chal­lenges the eco­nom­ic think­ing that shaped Cari­com’s for­ma­tion in the 1960s. At the time, lead­ing thinkers such as William De­mas and Arthur Lewis saw in­dus­tri­al­i­sa­tion—par­tic­u­lar­ly in light man­u­fac­tur­ing—as the path for­ward for small Caribbean states. But James said the da­ta now tell a very dif­fer­ent sto­ry.

In­stead, he point­ed to ser­vice-based and knowl­edge-dri­ven sec­tors as the re­al en­gines of growth.

“In­dus­tries like in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy, ed­u­ca­tion, health­care and fi­nan­cial ser­vices gen­er­ate mean month­ly in­come that is about 18 per cent above that of the av­er­age work­er,” he not­ed, sug­gest­ing these sec­tors of­fer stronger po­ten­tial for in­no­va­tion and glob­al com­pet­i­tive­ness.

James al­so high­light­ed re­gion­al com­par­isons to re­in­force his ar­gu­ment. “The two best per­form­ing mem­ber states of Cari­com are St Kitts/Nevis and The Ba­hamas,” he said, ex­plain­ing that both coun­tries have achieved rel­a­tive­ly high re­al GDP per capi­ta by fo­cus­ing on ser­vices rather than man­u­fac­tur­ing.

For James, the im­pli­ca­tions are clear: the Caribbean must re­think its de­vel­op­ment strat­e­gy and, crit­i­cal­ly, its mod­el of in­te­gra­tion.

“The whole re-in­te­gra­tion move­ment… was built on an enor­mous fic­tion,” he said blunt­ly, not­ing that ear­li­er pol­i­cy­mak­ers did not have the da­ta now avail­able to as­sess what ac­tu­al­ly works.

But while he is crit­i­cal of the past, James is not re­ject­ing in­te­gra­tion al­to­geth­er. In­stead, he is call­ing for a shift in how it is un­der­stood and im­ple­ment­ed.

“The cen­tral fac­tor dri­ving dy­nam­ic ad­van­tage… is the speed with which a coun­try learns and trans­lates that learn­ing in­to the knowl­edge, skills and self-con­fi­dence of our work­ers,” he ex­plained and be­cause of that, James ar­gued that in­te­gra­tion should fo­cus less on sim­ply en­larg­ing mar­kets and more on pool­ing knowl­edge across coun­tries.

“Cu­mu­la­tion cre­ates ac­cess to much faster learn­ing as a pool,” he said, sug­gest­ing that col­lab­o­ra­tion can help small states over­come their in­di­vid­ual lim­i­ta­tions.

James pro­posed what he de­scribes as a mod­ernised mod­el of re­gion­al co­op­er­a­tion built around tech­nol­o­gy and knowl­edge-shar­ing.

“What is need­ed is in­te­gra­tion as a dis­trib­uted learn­ing net­work of con­tribut­ing coun­tries,” he said, en­vi­sion­ing a sys­tem where Caribbean states col­lab­o­rate through de­cen­tralised, tech­nol­o­gy-dri­ven plat­forms.

Such a mod­el would re­ly heav­i­ly on emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies, in­clud­ing ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence and ma­chine learn­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to James, “In­te­gra­tion to de­vel­op deep tech us­ing a dis­trib­uted net­work of de­cen­tralised in­fra­struc­tures… is the way to go,” al­low­ing coun­tries to share costs while boost­ing in­no­va­tion and da­ta ca­pac­i­ty.

He added that this ap­proach could al­so de­liv­er broad­er ben­e­fits, from im­proved ef­fi­cien­cy to stronger com­mu­ni­ca­tion and more in­clu­sive par­tic­i­pa­tion across the re­gion. At the same time, it would re­quire a shift in gov­er­nance.

“Dis­trib­uted net­works will have to be man­aged de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly,” he said, call­ing for more par­tic­i­pa­to­ry sys­tems across Caribbean states.

For T&T, the warn­ing is par­tic­u­lar­ly sig­nif­i­cant.

As the coun­try con­tin­ues to grap­ple with di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion chal­lenges, James’ analy­sis sug­gests that fu­ture growth will de­pend less on ex­pand­ing tra­di­tion­al in­dus­tries and more on build­ing a knowl­edge-based econ­o­my—one that is deeply in­te­grat­ed with re­gion­al part­ners, but in a fun­da­men­tal­ly new way.