Day 2 Economy Panel

Julian, we're back.

And welcome back, welcome back everybody. Let's, uh, welcome you then to, as we continue our session here this afternoon, uh, quite a day. Uh, when we started off, of course, we did lay out a quite ambitious agenda, but I'm, I'm I'm sure that you agree that we've kept up to that and that we've had wide-ranging discussions, particularly with your input, your questions, etc., which we really encourage to keep coming in. So we are going to be turning our attention— and let me, let me put in a plug for the very last session. Again, it's an opportunity for us to learn a great deal about the progress of a very significant financial company in this region. And that is the Jamaica Money Market Brokers. Everybody knows the brand name as JMMB, and we'll hear from two of the key principals, or three in fact, of that organization and the consultant as well. So we look forward to that because I think it's been— it's an— it would be an eye-opener. We face in dealing with the economic environment that we face right now and the influences on that economic activity coming well beyond, from beyond well our borders. So we're going to have a panel that will help us walk through the matter of planning strategy in a world of economic crisis. And if there was ever a time of economic crisis, this certainly Is it? With everything happening with the impact of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia and the ripple effect that has had on the world activity, everything, particularly the food and fuel and much more. So we're all feeling it because the cost of living has certainly gone up. We all know about the gasoline prices, food prices have gone up., and the matter of supply and delivery of those supplies from, you know, various corners of the world that we've been expecting. It certainly brings us to a point of very critical reassessment of how we run our lives personally and as a country or countries across the Caribbean. So I'm going to be able, please, in fact, to introduce the moderator for this session, who is Dr. Valda Henry. She is with the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank, uh, in Basseterre, St. Kitts. She comes from Dominica, but she certainly is a, is a daughter of the, of the Caribbean by education and by work experience. She's been working in the private, in private sector as well as the public sector, and she in fact turned out to be only the third Deputy Governor of the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank. Bank, which is quite, quite a distinction, uh, in itself when you look at the history of the ECCB, which is by far, uh, one of the, if not the most modern, um, operation of its kind in our region, certainly with a tremendous track record in terms of the management of the currency, the Eastern Caribbean dollar. They've gone on to introduce, uh, DCash, which is a digital currency one of the first in the world for that matter. They have a most modern stock exchange operation, full electronic board operations, etc. So they've got a lot of pluses, and I'm sure that, um, Nivaldo will be able to share some of those aspects of the bank's operation with you, but also share her private sector experience as well. And she's got quite a panel I see just one person with Valda so far. Let's see if the others will be joining. Maybe I can bring Valda in here and she can help me to tell a little more of the stories about— Oh, Frances is coming up. But Valda, welcome if you're hearing me.

Yes, I'm hearing you. Thank you, Julianne. How are you doing? That's the name and the voice that I grew up on and I grew up knowing, so it's wonderful to be introduced by you.

Thank you, thank you very much, Valda. I'm very happy to tell the story of the ECCB. I think it certainly is one of the proudest regional institutions that we can really boast about, and we should be very, very pleased to share the story of the Bank with with, um, with the rest of the Caribbean, etc., as we wait for the, um, for the other panelists to join us. Valda, how long you been with the bank?

Julian, just to jump in, Dennis is there as well. If he could turn on his camera and his microphone.

All right, Dennis. Yeah, sorry, Dennis, you can come join us.

Hi, how are you doing? Mariano is making his way on, so we could, we could step off and then have them have them go ahead and, uh, do some problem solving in Mariana if needed.

Okay, fine. Okay, um, I, I know you've seen the, the profiles of, of the panelists. Uh, Dennis Chung, of course, in Kingston, Jamaica, like I am. Dennis is a man of many parts and many functions, and I'm happy to know that he's a contributor, regular contributor to the Jamaica Observer as well. Welcome, Dennis. How you doing?

Hi, how are you doing, Julian?

I'm good. Good. Okay. And of course, Mariano Brown, um, joined us in the, in the first session this morning. Mariano is a, well, a career banker in the first instance, uh, I almost have to say a career politician as well, government minister. And, um, you now of course serving as the head of the LockJack business school in Trinidad and giving critical guidance to another valuable institution in our region.

Let's hand over to them, Julian, and have them start while I see what's happening in the background.

All right, fair enough. Okay, so let me hand over to Valda, who will handle this particular panel. All yours, Valda.

Thank you very much, Julian. Thank you, Francis. Hi, Dennis, how are you doing?

Hi, how are you doing?

I'm good, good. Thank you. So we are here, we are here to talk on the economy, but the overarching theme of the session, I just wanted to kind of bring that in, is what are the emerging best practices in your industry's strategic, um, planning practices and innovation? And I want to just hop dovetail that into economy because we know that the economy impacts to a large extent is one of the factors when we're doing strategic planning that we must take consideration of because the economy truly has, um, great impact on organization strategy, on organization's success. And we know the economy has been impacted by so many factors in the last few years. We talk about COVID-19. Just when we think we were recovering from COVID-19— or every time we think we're recovering from COVID-19, a new variant shows up that brings us back into the flow. When you will be figured out, okay, this is going to be a constant change and we have to adapt, came the Russia-Ukraine war, and we saw the attendant impact on the oil economies. Particularly with fuel prices. I mean, just yesterday the prices of fuel rose again in St. Kitts, reaching almost $20. Um, in Montserrat, a week or so ago, even before that new increase, it was $21.60, um, a gallon. And you— we can just see the, you know, the various impacts. And so our governments have had to, in some cases, put in subsidies to mitigate the impact. And so, Dennis, I just want to start off with you with the question: how do you see the fact, those various factors impacting our economic performance? Let us maybe start globally and then we will dovetail into the Caribbean.

Thank you. Yeah, um, well, if you look at it globally, um, we're coming, as you said, Valda, out of the lockdowns from the pandemic. And what happened at that time is that because demand went down, then obviously supply had to adjust. So a lot of the, the manufacturers closed operations or scaled down. The shipping lines went down because there's— the demand was not there, and therefore it made no sense to, to keep the businesses open. When the demand came back, you know, when you, when you lock down a business operation like a manufacturing operation, it takes some time to come back. As if that was not bad enough from an operational point of view, the labor force became an issue. So people have found now that they don't have to go to a 9-to-5, and people are staying away. So if you look at the travel situation now, the delays that's happening It's because they can't find enough persons to work. And the travel industry is, is particularly important to have people there because there are a lot of regulatory controls that people, um, have to be involved with. And I know this because I was the one who divested Air Jamaica. I know very well how it operates. Um, so it created a, a global supply problem, right? Because the demand came back, and therefore the demand was there, the supply was not there. So you have more money chasing fewer goods, and it had inflationary pressures. So growth was coming back, certainly, because there was more spending out there and there was more money supply. You know, so growth was coming back, but it was coming back with inflation. And then if that was not bad enough, they decided to have a war, right? And what we found out is that Russia and Ukraine is a significant part of the global supply for commodities that are very important, which is fuel, right, which runs everything, and grain. Which is the foundation of most foods. So therefore, on top of what we came out of the pandemic with, we actually created a greater supply chain problem, right? Not to mention that the logistics were affected because of the war. So normal shipping lines or normal airlines, you know, were disrupted. So you create this, this massive problem. So you have an inflationary tropical storm from the pandemic, and then you create an inflationary hurricane from the war, and, and, and, and at the same time demand is coming back. Yes, right. So it's creating a problem, and therefore the biggest fear that people have for the economy globally now, um, you're going to have a recession, but what you might have is stagnation, which is one of the worst things that you can have because it means you have a slowing economy with higher prices, you know. Um, and that definitely, um, right now there's a labor shortage, but if it continues too long, it will cause, um, labor, labor losses, job losses, you know. And that will create a problem. Um, the longer the war goes on is the, the more it will be exacerbated and affect everything, um, the more inflation will take a hold until it gets to the point where demand starts happening, which is where you have—

there's Mr. Chung—

yeah, which is where you have job losses happening. Um, so if you take it back to the point of view of companies now companies and the microeconomy is really just, you know, a breakdown of the macro. So the micro makes up the macro. And companies, the economy of companies sort of operates the same way. Because if you can't get your supplies, so let us say you can even get the supplies, but you can't get the quantities you need, or supply chains are disrupted, then instead of a lead time of a week, you're talking about a lead time of 2 months. Immediately your holding cost for inventory goes up, right? You're also not certain that you get enough things in to sell to the consumer, so your prices are going up, the uncertainty is going up, right? Um, you have a labor shortage situation, right, which a lot of companies are facing. And therefore your labor costs might be going up. So companies are facing higher costs. Um, the, the cost of moving goods around also has gone up. The cost of moving people around has gone up. The cost of telecommunications has gone up. So it's creating an inflation of prices for companies also. And at some point, the breaking point is when the consumer cannot afford it anymore. We are not there yet, but it is getting there because mortgage rates are going up, prices for food is going up, fuel costs are going up. I'm hearing people saying, no, I just can't afford to come to work. And therefore, that's the situation that we face. So the key to disrupting this is to end the war and start reversing that. Will the war end? I don't know. There are a lot of egos involved, and maybe women should be running the world instead of men right now.

All right, that's a nice plug here for us women. I guess we have a stable ahead. When you think about the war, you know, I've been doing some background reading on the war, and you ask yourself, really, was that truly necessary and needed? But as you say, egos to a large extent, and when we put egos in front, it kind of masks judgment. And, um, unfortunately that war is impacting, um, us worldwide. And you're right, when the war, um, just started, I mean, if you had asked an average Caribbean person about Ukraine, most person may not have known about Ukraine or even know the— what it is that Ukraine is known for. Um, but here came that war and then we also the impact. Welcome Mariano, how are you doing today?

I'm doing fine. Sorry, I had a little problem with air meet, so sorry.

Yeah, we recognize that, but we just started and we had the first question that Dennis gave us a wonderful answer on. And Dennis, I have very good notes of your phrasing that I'm going to use. Inflationary tropical storm and inflationary hurricane. I'm going to use those because that was the first time I'm hearing it coined like this, but I think it is really appropriate, and I think I shall be using it, but I'll give you full credit.

I promise. No problem.

So then is the question that I did ask, not Dennis, Mariano, Dennis was, you know, what was his view of the, you know, the global economy and how he saw that impacting us in the region? And maybe you don't want to take a stab of that, of your own perspective. Thank you.

Well, the point is that we are price takers. I don't think there's too much choice in the matter. The second thing that follows from that is that we— and I followed it closely, I participated, I think, in about 2 or 3 seminars, um, uh, with 2 rating agencies, for example, um, as quickly as the— within 3 or 4 days, I put up some scenarios in terms of what they expected. Um, I think what we're looking at here is game theory as well, um, because some of the changes that have taken place— I mean, I mean, yesterday's Mr. Putin, um, they started to cut the gas supplies. That had always been in the cards, but I think that the, the, the general tender tone of the communication has been that Russia will be on the back foot, not understanding that Russia does have some cards to play, and they're playing them now. Where was it, where does it affect the Caribbean? Were we on the wrong end of that particular spectrum? And the last 300 years of our history plagued with periods where we have been in situations such as this. So this is not news. Unfortunately, our memories are short. We can only remember up to the last crisis, and the last crisis of this nature would, from the Caribbean's perspective, has always revolved around two things. The price of food and the price of energy. And those are precisely the two things which are going to hurt. Now, the, the, the, the, the response, um, and the, the best example are to look to two, two time frames, um, that we need to look at. And that, that is the first one is the Second World War. And in the Second World War, um, literally you're cut off from all supplies. So what did you depend on? And we weren't self-sufficient in anything at the time. And so the post-independence period was spent building self-sufficiency in certain areas. So you'll find that in, in, in not every island, but in certain islands, there's self-sufficiency with regard to chicken. But unfortunately, um, when you look at the supply chain, supply chain depends on imported foods, um, uh, imported food stock, corn, grain., which is important. So that, that always puts a crimp in your, in your crop. And what we've always missed is the interlinkage between the domestic demand and domestic supply, all right, in terms of the extent to which you have to deal with self-sufficiency. This is, this is a, this is not for the first time you're going to have to treat with this. Um, we've, we had the, the, the first oil crisis with us in the second, in the same way. So the war the oil crisis, um, in the 1974 period. Um, it gave some countries a fillip, it gave most of the Caribbean a headache. All right, we ran into that problem again in 2008, which put some countries in an economic tailspin, which made matters a little worse. Jamaica has been still struggling with the aftereffects of the first energy crisis, which has, in a sense, continued to dodge Jamaica, to the extent to which, of course, that what has also changed is that bauxite no longer plays the role that it did. So we have always been in the search for a replacement, and given the fact that we are small, small, small island states, the issue has always been what do we substitute? What is the substitute in terms of our export? Because as long as we depend on foreign supplies, then by definition we have to earn foreign exchange with it, and that exposes us to the variability of tourism. And then financial services. And financial services has been on the back foot, if only because the OECD countries have prosecuted a war on small Caribbean territories. I can only call it prosecution, all right, because it has been— it has not been even. It has been— unfortunately, they have all the tools. They can put us on a gray list, a blacklist, all the other things they could talk about, harmful tax jurisdictions. And when we examine the tax policies, for example, of some of the European Union states, um, and British dependencies, well, you'll have to ask the question, exactly what are we talking about? Yeah, right. And North America is full of low-tax jurisdictions within its own, um, para-statal arrangement. So for example, you have, um, most of the, most of the corporations are set up in Delaware. And if it isn't in Delaware, we have at least one or two other areas within the US where which have very friendly tax positions. So the Caribbean has to find modalities and mechanisms which allow us to live in the world. And when I say allow us to live in the world, the world is never going to be fair, right? We've been in that position for a long time. Gone are the days where we will exchange, or where one of the metropolitan countries will exchange green, um, Martinique and Guadeloupe for Canada. That is not, that is not on. So we now, in a sense, have to find a way to survive. And one of the ways to survive has been the CSME and what we've talked about, trying to create a large market. In one of the conversations this morning, um, I think one of the, one of the arguments put forward was that CSME is in fact too small, in which case our businesses have to look beyond that. Now, there are some, not many, there are some, not many, but there are some who have established footprints across the Caribbean and now have to make the decision in terms of brand image, what is the market penetration strategy to grow larger than that. Now I think that, that's the, that's the, the real, if you want, economic tasks before us. We are going to run into situations, we are in one now, the world is in the same situation. Nothing that is affecting us isn't affecting other countries or smaller countries elsewhere in the same way. In some instances have been more badly affected, right, because they've been dependent on Ukrainian supplies of grain, of oil, right? And that's, for example, any countries in the, in the, in the Middle East, um, who are going to be hurt, and some African countries from that perspective as well. So I don't think our situation is unique, right? What the difference is that we are small archipelagic states, um, which are— for most, most times you could, you could, you know, the countries are close together. In our case, we are separated by water, and that, and that leads to our difficulty. But it really requires us to change our thinking and also address our logistics. There are logistical challenges, there's no question about it. There are logistical challenges with regard to transport, with regard to how do we move goods around the region in small volumes, right? Um, to all intents and purposes, the capital of the Caribbean is Miami because that's where all the bulk shipping is done from. So I think that we have to redefine and find mechanisms to address our difficulties. It's not going to change. We've been living in this perspective, and I mean, this is about, you know, all of us are independent for something in the region of 60 years, and we've been spending time talking about how we solve the problems independently. That means each Caribbean territory on its own without really biting the bullet. See, the, the, the single market is still an idea. Um, it's going to be difficult, and there are going to be some natural inheritors to that particular space— the companies that are larger, that operate in the larger islands. But there is still, um, there are still things that we have to think about, how we're going to get that done. And there's some practical realities that we have to face, right? I don't think we're going to— there's no way around it. We're not going to— we're not— we're not— we can't control the definition of price. We don't control the import of grain. Of flour. Our diets have been hardwired and configured to depend upon certain imported staples. You can't change that overnight. So that there's some— they're huge. There are a number of steps that have to be made, and we have to do it consciously. There must be a conscious methodology to do so. And we've written and talked about, um, using the hinterlands of the Guyanas— is more than one, is not only, not only what we used to be British Guyana. There's also the French Guyanas. There's also the, the, the, the Dutch Guyanas, right? Where there is land space, there is capacity, but we've never harnessed that in a, in a trade format that works for us. And I think those are the kinds of things that we have to, we have to talk about, right? Because they not only give us, they give us leverage amongst ourselves, but also out of the Caribbean. And that is it. That, that is the kind of language I think we know we have to shape up too.

Thank you. I mean, lots of food for thought in that contribution, Maryann, and lots of follow-up questions can come from that. But I'm going to start with one because it also ties in nicely with what Dennis also spoke about. You spoke about the need— one of the things we need to change is our mind. You know, we have to change, you know, how we wire. Governor Antoine at the ECCB always talks to us about growth mindset. In fact, that has become now part of the overarching vision and culture of the ECCB, that whatever we do, it has to be for growth mindset, recognizing that we have to begin to look beyond the obvious. We have to begin to look outside of the box, really, as I like to say, no box to come once And I want to ask a question: how do we begin to change that mindset of our region where we become— yes, we are price takers, but as you said, something about mixing all the interlinkages between our supply and our domestic demand and supply. How do we begin to change our mindset to continue that self-sufficiency and take it beyond just being self-sufficient, but taking it to, you know, export and to give ourselves a buffer, um, for growth and development.

If we look at tourism, one of the biggest issues in tourism is food, right? If you think about it, what does a guest do, right? At the end of the day, he's going to pay for services, right? So we have to define the services that we're talking about. That's one. And, and what we would consider to be the tourism attract— the tourist attractions that we're going to carry them to. And then the second aspect of that is I have to eat food. Now, if you look at the menus on most of the hotels, well, what are on the menus? Well, essentially, they are essentially repeats of what will be available in any sort of hotel somewhere else. By definition, that means you have to import the food. Look at the fruits, right? We have seasonal fruits. But when you look at— if you go to a hotel and the fruits are going to be apples and grapes, right? Bananas, probably, yes, right? But apples, grapes, and pears, right? We're not going to see watermelon sometimes, right? But not enough of them, not enough of the Caribbean, what we consider to be the Caribbean fruits. So if you went, for example, for Grenada, right? Now we know that one of the great fruits that they have is sugar apple, Right, in fact, the Europeans named everything apple, right? So we have all different kinds of apple, right? But we don't grow them in commercial quantities, and we don't grow them for commercial, um, vintage, for commercial capacity, right? Now, those are the kinds of changes that, that reordering of domestic demand and domestic supply— we've talked about it all the time— but that really also speaks to the issue of menu. What's on the menu, right? How is the menu? How do you— when you go to Thailand, you actually— you go to Thailand to get hamburgers? No, you're going to get a Thailand, you're going to get a mango salad, a Thai mango salad, a Thai papaya salad, right? Or, and how is it going to be cooked? What else is going to be on the menu with it? And everybody goes there, they don't ask for, um, well, some people might, but, but you don't ask for the same European food that you get in Europe. But when you go to Malaysia, you go to Indonesia, you eat Indonesian food, you eat Malaysian food, right? We have to talk about it in that sense, and we have to prepare it in that sense. We have to make it tasty. We have to make it, we have to make it look good, right? We have to, we have to sell the benefits from that perspective, right? Thailand, peanut paste, right? Satay, right? Or Malaysia coconut, right? Or Indonesia peanut, right? They're all different kind, they're all different kinds of mixtures that they use. We have similar things. In terms of our drinks, and you see it in Latin America, if you go to Latin America, for example, and you go to a Latin American bistro and you order, you want, you want juice, fresh juice. So you want a batido, you want mispero, you want guanábana, you want, um, waterpina, right? Well, pineapple, soursop, right? Those are all the kinds of things that are there, but those are not on our menus because they're not part of our culture. They're not things that we sell. So yes, tourism, no question about that, but Caribbean tourism has to have a Caribbean context. Can't keep coming to the Caribbean to eat European food, to eat North American food, right? And that's part of the mindset difference. Where does that start off? Well, we have training grounds. What are the training grounds? The training grounds are the food supply chain that we use for school feeding. Right? The children don't want to eat local foods. Why not, right? I mean, that should be the nexus.

All the—

all the Caribbean— all of the school feeding programs should be about Caribbean food. Jamaica is a little better off than that, but the Jamaican menu sometimes makes it into the hotel, certainly for breakfast— ackee and saltfish, right? There are— we have Caribbean— we have Caribbean delicacies, right? But they're not Why we don't grow ackee all over the Caribbean. So we grow a lot more ackee, and I think now you all import ackee in a can too, if I'm not mistaken. No offense, man. But those are the kinds of things, those are the kinds of decisions, right? Now it takes a little while to embed it, to set it in position. Um, so to my mind, when we talk about self-sufficiency, right, there are a lot of subtleties in the changes. Right, it doesn't mean to say that we have to block tourism, no, but we certainly have to Caribbeanize part of the context, right? And Caribbeanize part of the context, we have to popularize it. Everybody knows about rum punch, people know about rum punch, people know about Caribbean rums, right? But the definition of rum, most times when you ask a foreigner, what is it they talk about rum, they tell you Bacardi. We've had some changes, we've had some changes in that regard. So that's what I'm talking about. There's a concept of brands. We talk about marketing. Marketing is not some broad—

I want to hold that for a while in terms of the marketing. We're going to come back to that, but I want to get Dennis's, um, you know, own intake on that whole question of how do we, you know, change our mindset and to become, you know, focus more on not only self-sufficiency but in terms, as you just rightly said, owning our own Caribbean-ness, being proud of it and marketing it just as others are doing it. So Dennis, let me have your intake on that, please.

Well, I think Mariano is spot on with everything he has said, and I'll give you a few examples. In 2014, I was invited by CARICOM to do a presentation on behalf of the private sector, and I was amazed that Caribbean countries are discussing barriers for their own goods going into each other country for years, and they can't solve it, right? But we put more investment in the ports to import goods than we do in the production and supply chain of agriculture locally. And that comes back to Mariana's point. Right? Where does this all come from? I think that the issue that we face in the Caribbean, and I actually wrote it years ago, is our politics. Our politicians cannot agree on policies that are going to unify us within our own countries and within the region. So If you look at the crisis that we're facing globally now, why are we price takers? The main issues that Mariana spoke about is the oil and food, right? Now, I've always maintained that if we— the solution to the problems that we face now is good fiscal policy, not monetary policy. Right, so in Jamaica's case, for example, our biggest import is oil, but we don't have a good public transportation system. We encourage everyone to import cars and drive their own cars. So I did an estimate a few years ago, and just by spending 1 hour in traffic a day the amount of people who drive on the roads. It's costing us $160 billion a year in Jamaica in productive hours. Just think about also the amount of time that people spend picking up their children from school, right? So we, we don't put a lot of effort from a fiscal policy point of view, and I think that's where the mindset change needs to happen. In making ourselves self-sufficient. So just recently, you know, we want to be self-sufficient, but why were we until recently putting taxes on electric vehicles and renewable energy equipment, right, when that would make us self-sufficient? Why are we, in Jamaica's case, speaking about how much money we're losing from the public transport company and not thinking about how much money we're losing by not having a good public transportation system, right? So we create all these barriers, and as I said, we don't put a lot of money into local production of agriculture, right? The other thing that Mariana spoke about is one of the things that would have been helping us today is the CSME, if we had it organized properly. So this thing that people speak about, um, our islands are too small, right? I am sure that we would be happy to, to have a trade arrangement with Singapore But Singapore is the size of one of our parishes in Jamaica.

Indeed.

So the size of a country is not important, it is the consumption in a country. But what we have done is that because of the lack of proper fiscal policy from the governments, right, and the unification of the governments, we have failed to develop the capacity of our labor market to produce and consume, right? So I spoke about the fact that I divested Air Jamaica, right? And I always thought, why is it that it costs me less to fly to California than it does to fly from one country in the Caribbean to another? It takes me to go to Dominica 2 days from Jamaica. It takes me one day to go to Europe, right? So if you can't have a good transport system, the logistics that Maria speaks about, if you do not put the investments in local production, right? And if you look in Jamaica, certainly, right? But if you look across the region, right? And I, when I went to CARICOM, I actually pulled out the global competitiveness Business Report, right? The top 6 factors that inhibit production in the Caribbean are common to all countries except Haiti, and we know that Haiti has a problem. Yeah, but we all have the same problem, and I think it stems from our political system that we have, right? So we have labor issues, we have crime. Crime is a problem in Jamaica. It costs us 4% of GDP. Right? The crime cost us 4% of GDP, but it doesn't occur to them that if we fix crime, we'll get 4% of GDP. Yeah, right. And, and those are the things that, that create the issue. So, um, you know, if we were to fix those things, you know, Rudy Giuliani did what he called the broken windows approach, right, to fixing the issues there. And we have not done that. Now, what drives it is that, and I concluded a few years ago that I think the problem that we have is our political arrangement, our Westminster system, right? Because if I have in Jamaica, for example, 31 members in the House that forms the majority, right? And 25 of them are ministers in the government, then who holds the government accountable? Because they are forming their own thing. And then what happens now is that we cater to the lowest denominator. So we cater to the person who, um, you know, the, the person who makes a lot of noise and goes out and vote, and they are the lowest denominator that we cater to. And then we bring everyone down to that standard. And I think that is the issue that we face. That's the mindset change that needs to happen because I think that once we fix that, then we will be able to resolve a lot of the issues that we face. But I think certainly even now, if we were to make the right decisions, right, on energy, which is good public transportation system, renewable energies in the region, right, then we would significantly reduce our dependency on energy imports. If we were to invest in local agricultural production, like the roads, even the roads leading from the farms, right, or even the CSME, and the governments get together and say, hey, you know, you have a competitive advantage in producing banana, so why don't you produce banana? You have a competitive advantage in producing rice and grow your economy on that basis. As I said, the size, the geographic size of a country does not matter. It is the, um, the people that you have in that country. So I think Mariano is spot on, you know, if we address those issues. But, you know, the— I, I think the problem is that, and I don't know if that will happen to us, Mariano, if If we go into government, we might start thinking the same way because I think something happens to them when they go there.

Oh no, you know, I wasn't in government.

So I guess, so what you're trying to say then is it's like Animal Farm then. So they wanted that change and when they finished, they got, you know, was that the humans they wanted to change? But Mariana dropped out again. I'm sure Francis would be able to bring him back on. But you know, from the discussion, you know, this rich, vibrant discussion that's happened between you and Mariano, one thing comes up, jumps out at me, is the need to reframe our issues. Yes. You use a classic example. Instead of saying about the cost we are spending on public transportation, see what we could have saved if we would fix the public transportation. And you know, three issues came up in terms of— more than three, but I want to focus on three and we will see where we go from that. The air travel, and you're right, and for us in the Eastern Caribbean, it is even worse, um, especially after COVID. And you know, if LIAT, um, the challenges of LIAT— and in fact, just, um, last week or two weeks ago, um, a popular entertainer from Grenada wrote a letter, you know, asking for LIAT to return because in order— you— and the cost to travel, it's cheaper for me to leave St. Kitts to go to anywhere in the US than to go back home to Dominica. So you become some type of question where you do— you send your son for vacation, do you send him home or do you send him to meet an auntie in America, you know? So, so that is there. In order to travel, you're talking about traveling even from our spot, from— to move from St. Kitts to St. Lucia and to some other parts on the north, we make it— we have to most cases go to Miami to then reconnect. Given the challenges. Can that be sustainable? It can. And so we need to begin to talk about how our own interconnectivity and travel among our countries for that level of trade and that level of cooperation to take place. Agricultural diversification— I mean, I have spoken about that when I was doing my first degree at, at Cave Hill. I actually wrote a paper on the need for that, to move not just from just producing these raw materials but to be agro-processors, to be manufacturers. And there was a wonderful panel just before ours by the manufacturers. And a few weeks ago, I went on a walk with my sons. His school had a bell mashik, you know, a walk of fun. And as we were walking through the interior, listen, the amount of mangoes that were on the streets. Well, I love mangoes, so it pained my heart to see all these mangoes littering. And then you saw guavas fall. So, and I'm like, Why don't we harness that? But if I go to the supermarket, I'll find all sorts of imported jams and jellies and juices and so on, while we have those things rotting. A few years ago, I went to Costa Rica, and listen, everything was coffee-based. I pick up what I thought was a chocolate, and by the time I came to the end, there was a coffee bean in it. And I'm like, really now? And I asked a question, and one of the explanations was that Yes, they were very heavily dependent on coffee, and with the glut, they moved from, if it's what, 60, 70% to something like 30%. And then what did they do? They asked Nestlé to come in. They provided land and other fiscal incentives with the understanding that after a few years, it would go revert to the government because they would have transferred knowledge, transferred technology, and so on. And so there was— so when people say public sector things don't work, that's not true. It's the management and the mindset. Fully publicly owned, successful company based on that. And then we talk about brought in Singapore. I'm Dennis, and a few years ago I had the good fortune to go to Singapore, but almost everywhere I went I could find a bust or something of Sir Arthur Lumis. And I was like, really? And the explanation— Sir Arthur Lewis, you know, part of his PhD dissertation, and he eventually had this theory on development by invitation, arguing it's not just what anyone wants to give you. You must determine what it is you want so that when you go out to negotiate, you ask for what you want and you don't settle until you get what you want. So you don't just take something because someone is offering it. And as I said, we were taught to say yes please and no thank you. And Singapore has followed that to a tee. So the credits are for Louis for making them a tiger, the Tiger of the East. And I said, so Sir Arthur Lewis, right from St. Lucia there, why is it we have not adopted that same fury, that same philosophy. Well, we have. And then you come right to the political. Yes, Mariano, you want to say something and then we'll go to Dennis.

Yeah, well, I keep bouncing in and out, so you have to forgive me. I don't know what the reason is.

When you are in now, we're going to take you and then we will come back to Dennis.

Thank you. All right, so I'm going to— the point I'm going to make it at is that we've all followed Sir Arthur Lewis to some extent. There's a difference to the way it was It was harnessed, it was used in the Far East. And I think probably the best person has written about is a fellow called Brunton, who analyzes it. You know, he says that the learn by doing is not a very specific calibration or the very specific injunction. What you have to do is you have to work it out. It's not formulaic. And in the case of Trinidad and Tobago, speaking as a former Minister of Trade, one of our issues has been that when you, when you, when you give— we've even today, we're still giving tax holidays. It may not be the best idea, right? And it may be value, for example, in changing any tax system to reflect that. I mean, maybe we need lower levels of tax and greater levels of compliance, but the other— there are issues where that is concerned as well. Suffice it to say that one of the critical— is one of the critical things is if you— infant industries never grow up. Unless you set some time frames. It's like your children, at some stage of the game you have to kick them out of the house. Um, I've had some great difficulty with that myself, so I speak with some degree of practical knowledge here, right? So the bottom line is that you have to, you have to recognize that you can't give infant industry status and protect industries, which is what tends to happen from a political perspective And because we are small and our issues are a little fractious, they become amplified. So from that perspective, that's one of the things that we have to recognize and change. You have to grow up. The second thing that we have to work towards is family business. And that family is the first font of accumulating capital. Dennis and myself shared some shared some platforms about 20 years ago, right, when we were talking about venture capital in the region. Yes, yes, that's where we first met. Um, but it's something that we, we need to pay attention to. The successful firms which are running across the region tend to be family firms, and the ones— and, and they quite frankly have a view. Most of them are in second generation, just— they're just straddling first to second generation.. And they have a view as to what competitiveness means and what competitiveness across the region is. They don't necessarily want to tell everybody about it, right? And there's one example of one very— the most successful entrepreneur in the region, right? Doesn't produce anything. He doesn't manufacture a single thing, but he's an agent for many things across not only the region but across many sectors in the world. And what does he do it? He does it, and he does it behind what was offshore legislation. What was the offshore legislation intended to do? Well, to be given to foreigners. He was one of the few people who set up behind that, that, that mechanism and quite frankly made his business an international business, right? He was my client. I am— he's gotten out of the business now. I'm sure, um, you would know him. His name is Kiffin Simpson. Right, right. Kevin does not— he doesn't operate— business is not— his businesses in Barbados too, but his business is, is across the world. And one of the things it goes back to, and this is the concept into what this conference is about, right, it really starts off with what your intent is. We have to have more than one way of— let me look at, look at— we have some examples as well. Look at the Stewart family, right? They started off, they transitioned out of what one would call domestic manufacturing in terms of manufacturing appliances and they move their capital into another area of business. And their business area is to basically sell the region. It's a very successful model, which is the Sanders model, right? It's very successful. It's placed in the region. But what is it, what is it, what is it actually we're talking about in terms of, in terms of the modern business practice? We're talking about brand and consistency of brand performance across the perspective. These are the kinds of opportunities that exist. Governments can't make our businesses function at that level. Our private sector has to think bigger than the Caribbean. It has to think pan-Caribbean to start. You have to have your whole market tied up, but you also have to think in the widest perspective. Once I have my whole market tied up, am I only going to operate here? How else can I successfully expand? Now, I think that is a lesson that we need to pay attention to, and we need to think about it from a business perspective. Quite frankly, too often we rely on our history and talk about our European colonizers. We have to use the European experience. The bottom line is they came here, they set up small businesses, right? And those small businesses basically gave them, um, capital to set up business elsewhere, right? We have to think of ourselves as generators of capital and protect the capital that we have, but find ways to generate additional revenue out of it. Now, our private sector has to bite some of those bullets., and you have to buy some of those billets sometimes within the confines of your geographic space. But you also have the example of Kiffin Simpson. It doesn't only have to be your own product. How can you market it to the rest of the world? What makes you better? What could make you better at doing what some of the other companies are doing, right?

Good place, yes, to segue, um, Mariano, um, in terms of now that we've, we've spoken about the economy Well, how do we now dovetail that? Because as you said, West Indians— I just want to speak and piggyback a little bit on Sir Arthur Lewis— implemented to some extent, but I don't think fully enough. In fact, one of the assignments I've given our Chief Director of Policy is to go and revisit Sir Arthur Lewis, um, whole theory and dissertation, and come with strategies and recommendations of how we can reintroduce it, apply it throughout our ECCU for greater effectiveness. But you, you're definitely in a good place in terms of the branding and the marketing and now taking the economy into the businesses. And I know part of the panel is— of the reason for this entire conference is also saying, how do we revisit our strategy? How do we re-strategize? So I want to ask both of you, and I'm going to start off with Dennis. Now that we've looked at the economic, and you all have given perfect answers, and you can see the comments, the audience is just truly enjoying your contributions. How does a company, a business, remain viable, revisit and adjust its strategy which is the role of strategies to ensure long-term sustainability of any organization. How does a business, given all of the economic realities, create sustainable organization in this environment?

One of the things that we have to understand when we talk about strategy is that your strategy means nothing unless you understand what is going to happen to your market, your consumer. And that's the problem I think a lot of people— the mistake a lot of people make in that they look at re-strategizing their business based on their current operations and not say to themselves, what is happening to my market? So if I know that the what the impact of the economy is. My market is changing. People are, are liking convenience a lot more because, you know, this whole thing about work from home has changed it. So you have to deliver things in a different way to people, right? So the channels that you use, what is happening to your market in terms of, in terms of fashion and consumption trends, right? Are people going to be seeing, um, when they're seeing higher prices, what are the choices that they're going to make, right? Um, when you, when hit with inflation, a common, an average household might say, hey, let me lay off a little of the luxury goods, you know. So that, that then generates into, do I have the, the right product to go forward? Is my product and service um, optimized to serve the changing market, understanding first what the market is. So I always think it's very important first to start off with, with looking at some market research and see what's happening. So understand what's happening in the economy, and then let someone tell you who understands, you know, um, if this is happening in the economy, this is what I can expect to happen with, um, with my market., right? And then you look at that size of market and say, you know, hey, do I have enough? I mean, because one of the strategies that you can adopt is to say, I'm going to pivot and I'm going to do something else, you know, until this storm blows over, right? Um, and then when you do that, you have to then from, from outside then look inside and say, am I set up efficiently to deal with this? Right? How do I manage my cost to do this? How do I manage my channels going forward, right? So there's one thing I always use a lot of, it's called the Business Canvas, right? And it's just a map, you know, with about 7 quadrants looking at all the various things that can happen and linking them together. I think everyone needs to re-look at strategy now. Right? Because things have changed with your market, and therefore you need to look at what is happening internally because your, your revenue impact, right? And I'm an accountant by training, so yeah, right? This is how I look at things. Your revenue, right? Um, what is your, your profit margins that you're going to look at? So your cost of sales is important because if the economy is driving inflation, then your supply chain management is also a part of your strategy that you need to look at. You know, um, how can I secure cheaper goods? How can I secure a more efficient way of doing business? So for example, one of the things that we have done at my company is we have moved towards, um, more work from home. So even though the pandemic has stopped, we have continued it. Because we recognize also not what has happened to our consumer, but what has happened to our employee. Because employees are showing now that they have a bigger handle than they thought, you know, and you have to adapt to that. So, you know, by, by setting up work from home or, or setting up what we call hot desking, you know, so, so persons who live in a certain area don't have to travel too far anymore to the office. They— I'm actually giving those employees a pay increase without giving them a pay increase because I'm giving them more disposable income. So those are— so you have to look at all those quadrants, you know, your automation, right? Because obviously your time to delivery and your financial reports that come out, right, is going to depend a lot on how information moves. And, and in a situation like today where the technology— I mean, the pandemic came and the pandemic went but the technology has been moving, right? Um, you have to be able to deliver things very quickly, and the only way you can do that is with information. So you have to have a— coming out of this, and certainly with the Ukraine war, you have to have a strategy session that looks at all of those things and bring everyone into the picture that understands it, you know. So, um, you know, there's nothing wrong with bringing in someone from outside because you get a different perspective, like a Mariano, right? Because you have been living in it, you know. And, and it might— again, coming back to the whole thing of the, the, um, the transport sector, you know, you might be saying, hey, it's going to cost me $100 to bring him in, but guess what? By bringing him in, you might be saving $1,000, you know. And therefore, I think that is what we need to look at, you know, if we're serious about strategy in the company. And, and, you know, I said to people all the while that this is what successful companies on the stock exchange do. They spend a lot of money on coaching, on bringing in people with strategy, and constantly looking at strategy. On budgets, you know, and, and the, the infrastructure to support it. So I think once they do that, once they take that step, then, um, they'll be fine in business. Or another important consideration, you know, um, I never get emotional about business, right? So one, one outcome of it might be, hey, this thing is not going to work, you know, let me shut down and save my capital.

You know, that might be an outcome, you know, but, um, knowing when to walk away, you know, there's this— Exactly, when to walk away and know where to hold on. Yeah, that is the wisdom, you know. I was reading something earlier and it was saying, you know, in business is one of the things is that there has to be wisdom, you know, in terms of opportunities. What opportunities are we pursuing and what opportunities are not worth pursuing. Because something that may be worth pursuing for you, Dennis, may not be worth pursuing for me. And not because you are successful at it, I need to follow that. And sometimes that's what you see in our region. Someone sees— nobody thought of an idea, but someone's thought of it, and they see the person doing success, you know, it's been successful, and they jump in. And then they don't have the same success, and they wonder, but why? Because it was not aligned to even your own businesses. And in the manufacturing panel, Jeffrey Hall spoke about, you know, one of the points he made that I really held on to. Marion, I'm coming to you just now, is the fact that when he said, you know what, this pandemic has also shown and the changes that have happened, tied in with what you say in terms of the remote working, recognizing that yes, the employer is now have a little bit more weight, but you recognize that You also got performance when you thought you couldn't before, but when you came to it, you saw that in some cases there was greater productivity working from home. And he said, if you recruit the right persons who are aligned to the values of your organization, you give them what they need, the resources that they need, and you empower them— you give them clear directions, resources they need, and you empower them to lead and to act and to manage success would be guaranteed. And he said in the next few years, um, Francis, I hope you heard that he's going to come back to give his story of this, you know, of this experiment— I put that in brackets— of this new approach of doing things. And as you all are speaking, reframe is the word that keeps coming to me. We need to reframe our mindset, reframe how we do things. And Dennis, I'm going to come to you the same question: how do we as businesses manage or how do we pivot, to use Dennis' word, given these economic realities that we face?

Were you asking me that?

Yes, Mariano. Yes, Mariano, put on your cameras, let us see you.

Give me the hard question.

Okay, good.

I like Dennis. The question is the same question, just reframed. And there's no question hard for you, Mariano, don't be modest, let's go.

I, I, I'm like, I'm like Dennis. I was— my background is also, um, I trained in economics. I'm familiar with economic theories, but the reason why I didn't become an economist, a practicing economist— at a theory level is mostly practicing economists, right? I tend to work with government. I wanted to have a more hardscrabble approach, so I took the position, um, like Dennis, and I became a, a, an accountant, a financial accountant, and I also did an MBA, and I actually ran some financial services firms, right, in Barbados and in Trinidad. So I understand a little bit about the way businessmen think, and the more successful ones. And the whole idea is that government can say what it wants, if businesses or individuals don't see a business opportunity, nothing is going to happen. You can put any amount of incentives behind it, and most times the successful businesses don't always need incentives to get started. They need an opportunity, and if they see the opportunity, will go for it. Now, the question after they see the opportunity is, how can I develop it? What, what is it? What is the position? What is the idea? So I have some businesses that I may finance at different levels and at different parts of the performance, and I would have come back to see them at different places. And now, as I'm CEO of the business school, I have to put it into into, into context, into theory. All right, so let me, let me, let me put it this way, right? There are some family businesses, they grow up, they're successful, they're good at what they're doing. The Bermudas Group is biscuit. They understood biscuits, right? What really they understood was flour. They had a product, and that product they had to develop, develop packaging, all right? Because their product used to break, right? It's fragile. It's like what you call water biscuits in Jamaica. Right, so you have to have a type of packaging. Now, they spent a good few years before they arrived at the right type of packaging to move them. This Bermuda Biscuit Company. All right, now, um, somewhere along the line, um, and it took a recession, the middle of the recession in Trinidad and Tobago in the 1980s when energy prices dropped and Trinidad and Tobago did badly and so on and so forth. Well, they bought a bread company. Flour, right? There were certain complementarities in terms of the product line, right? But most importantly, there were complementarities in terms of the logistics, right? Who were they selling to? Were they selling the same companies? So I have one set of trucks, I could do the same route, right? But I have twice the amount of product. All of a sudden I could maximize my sales, right? I can change my whole business model. And if I'm doing that, what are the other complementary things that can work with that? Were snacks. Well, a company went out of business, they bought the company that was going out of business, and all of a sudden they found themselves in another line of business. Now they've moved those 3 lines of business literally all over the region, but they have also moved internationally with 2 additional lines of business. There's a brand, there's an image, right? How does it fit into Latin America? And that's exactly what they've done, right? So The business actually is headquartered and run out of a Latin American country. It's not— they are in Trinidad too, but they are also based in Costa Rica, right? And Costa Rica has a much more robust, um, supply chain for fruits and products which are the kind of things we use as snacks— bananas, breadfruit, chips, right, which are different. When you go to Singapore, you will also get, um, what are jackfruit chips, right? Completely different, right? So that, that's the whole idea of using— it's in the same market position, my same market space. It is what you would call, um, fruits, and the same token, but it's also in terms of the snack size, right, the snack portions. Right, that they're not— they don't, they don't take a heck of a lot of your money, but the kind of things that you put in a school, a school lunch kit, or they will— you, you could serve as, as, you know, if you have a, a small affair or in the office and so on and so on. Something like potato chips, but you don't have to make potato chips in the region. You can make chips out of different things, but the idea is the line— business line extension. But you have to establish some success story somewhere along the business chain, which gives you the cash flow and the capacity to make one with what we'd call product innovation and the other investment streams to make it happen. Now, that can be supported by fiscal incentives, but the first point of departure is the business idea. That's what I want to focus on, right? The businesses have to see the idea. Right now, tourism in some islands is not viable from that perspective. When I say not viable from that perspective, from the perspective of linking it with food. But we have to— if it's not going to become viable unless somebody sees the opportunity and starts to do it. So should it be the hotelier, or should it be somebody in business kind of seeing the opportunity and going to the hotelier with a possibility? Those are the kinds of— that— those are the kinds of interaction. Now, business opportunities also come from interaction of ideas and minds. When you speak to successful businessmen and they tell you about opportunities, those opportunities invariably are about which contacts they made, whom they met, whom did they— who saw what they saw and decided that they would, that they would go along with it, right? And those are the kinds of— you can't legislate that, you can't force anybody to do that. But what it requires is an ideational type meaning that somebody who thinks about it, and you have to see somebody who is risk— not risk-averse or risk-prone. They can see the business opportunity. But what most of us see is risk. Why? Because we don't understand the nitty-gritty and the technology which is required to make it work. So for us, we think about all these other things that we're going to have to do. But if it's a line of business extension, I'm in the business of making biscuits, but then the biscuits is about the oven, It's about how much time it stays in the oven. Was it length of the production cycle? Was it conveyor belt structure? What type— where am I going? What type of machines do I get to put the products in? Well, I already have a certain type of expertise, right? So that I can align that type of expertise, I could get them to pay attention to doing some, a couple of things which are different, which moves them in that direction. Now, that those are what the opportunities are. You can't force anybody to do that. That's the point I would make, right? Kiffin Simpson saw a business opportunity. He started off— what he did, he started off by stocking grocery shelves, right? But he also then, he got into— he understood merchandising, and he got into the merchandising. Instead, he started import cheap cars, Skodas. Nobody really wanted to buy Skodas, but he was successful. And then he started bringing in even cheaper car called Suzuki, right? And he made Suzuki very popular in in the region because he saw it as something that fit in. It was, it was price competitive, it was easy to fix, it's Japanese but not as expensive as Toyota, right? So it fit into that particular market. And he also used it in these smaller countries because this 1,100cc van would all of a sudden transport everything, right? And in smaller markets, people look for that type of transportation. If you look at the SM Jaleel Group in Trinidad, in the sense of success stories, the reason why they could take on Coca-Cola and beat Coca-Cola at their own game is Coca-Cola had big massive trucks. Their definition of transport was built à l'americana. What did, what, what, what did SM Jaleel do? They use 1-ton and 2-ton trucks so they could get all the little small mom-and-pop shops. All of a sudden they blocked off a whole market which everybody thought that they had a monopoly on. They took it out, right? So they're little, they're little tricks of the trade, my little tricks of the trade, right? And Jamaica is not, is not without, not without its own story in this regard. I'll consider Red Stripe. Red Stripe grew so successful in, in what, in London. Not in, not only was already successful in, in, in, in, in Jamaica, but it was so successful because the brand of cricket was also so successful in London, in England, that Red Stripe became associated with West Indian cricket. And it became so popular that they were outselling Guinness in their own market. What did Guinness do? Buy it.

Well, hold there, hold there. We're going to come to that. Some of the points that you made, you know, again, they just resonate. And then, you know, you can see it from the comments. But last year, you know, VF Inc. hosted a web symposium, a web symposium. And one of the things that Greg Anassi, who was one of the speakers, and I was really trying to get to be a panelist on this panel. One of the things he said, and you've just said it, he said, you know, the conventional thing is that success will come from hard work. And he said, that's not quite true. Hard work is important, but there are so many more elements. To success. And when you think about it, importance of networking and connections cannot be underestimated. And so, so, Mariano, when you talk about sharing of ideas and the— and yes, you can't regulate that, but that is where we have to engage in much more robust discussion. But one of the things I'm finding that sometimes we people get so— we, you know, we hold on to points either against political reasons or otherwise that sometimes we cannot even have an open, objective discussion. So we need to really get back to that point where we can, you know, let all ideas contend, sharing of ideas and the importance of networking. And, you know, it ties back so much to just recently Governor Antoine at the ECCB outlined for us the transformation model ECCB will be following. And it talks about— it starts off with ideation, ideas, coming up with ideas, then creating out of the ideas, advocating, and then replicating. Because it's not good. And all the examples you've given for all of this success of the, of the successful firms are not just companies that have remained in their own local market or their own local communities. They have been able to replicate that throughout, throughout the countries first and then beyond the walls of the countries. And as earlier we spoke about CSME and how do we strengthen CSME, that we move out throughout our own region, but in within our own region, sorry, but also more importantly, how do we provide that support for our firms to expand beyond the walls of our region, beyond the seas and the oceans and the boundaries of our region. Dennis, I'm going to start with you, and then we're going to come back to Mary.

Well, um, I think you're spot on. Um, we don't— and it comes back to the whole thing of fiscal policy again— we don't support our companies, right? And I give you just this example. Which I always say. If you look at the United States stock market, right, the company that is the number one company today was not the number one company 8 years ago, right? If you look at the Caribbean stock markets, the company that's the number one today wasn't number one 40 years ago. So it shows you that there's no lack— there is a lack of innovation and growth. Because when new companies— so Apple came on the scene and you had Tesla on the scene, right? But I'm dealing with the same companies from 30 or 40 years ago on my stock market, right? Which are the big companies. And that's because we don't allow, um, give— as Mariana said, we don't give them the opportunity to grow. Um, So a lot of the, the, the, the persons who get into business, certainly in Jamaica, is not because they have the ability to grow the business, but because they have a political connection. So we're killing ourselves right there, right? So the first thing we need to do is, is provide a ground, a fertile ground for that opportunity. Give companies the ability to build on their ideas, to give people the ability to build on their ideas, right? And that's the only way it's going to work. We also have to think about the objective that we want to achieve, right? So when we were thinking about the CSME, for example, was the thought process really to have an objective of providing a market for the Caribbean community and the Caribbean people to realize their full potential, and markets to realize their full potential? Or was it just governments getting together and saying, hey, we need to start a regional trade bloc just like everyone else? But they didn't do it. To actually enhance the economic environment. They did it because everyone else did it, right? Um, so we get back to the whole matter of the, the, the what we have a competitive advantage again in, right? And I've always maintained that, as, as Mariano said, our region is— well, apart from Trinidad, which is oil, right? Is primarily tourism. But then, you know, I said to our Minister of Government recently, why are we celebrating, um, the export of 2 container loads of mango, right? A 5% growth in tourism, right, has a much more significant impact than a 100% growth in a non-traditional area. But it sounds sexy and it sounds good on a political platform to say that we're developing this new non-traditional area, right? But if I were to— and I use an example all the while of Montego Bay. We have a hip strip in Montego Bay, right? And the hotels there go for $200 and something a night. Right? Um, and when I think about— I said if I were to get rid of crime there, just, just, just getting some order there, just for example making it a no-drive zone where pedestrians are walking, right? I could just with that fiscal policy move that hotel rate from $250 a night to $500 a night. Right? And therefore, it comes back to us, first of all, understanding what the objectives are that we want to achieve, which I think is a primary problem that we have, in that our policymakers are not concerned that much about objectives, right, of economic growth, but rather are more concerned about objectives of how to hold on to power. And how to follow rules, right? Um, if I was to get that right and I was to put the policies in place to support that at the, the local level and also the regional level, then I think that this region would— could see significant growth. You know, I tell people all the while, the Caribbean countries, if we had proper law and order, if we had proper infrastructure, if we had proper opportunities would be the greatest place in the world to live because we don't have winter. We have good climate 365 days a year, right? We have great culture, right? If persons could move, um, at a reasonable cost between the regions, just that movement alone, think about how it can develop the US, for example. Developed their economy, developed on the back of the highway system, right, of transportation. And I think those are the things that we need to do: clear the roadblock of bureaucracy, set an objective of real economic growth, right? And that's what we want to achieve. And put the fiscal policy in place to achieve that. I, I leave you with one last thing, Valda, um, a recommendation to the, the persons who are participating here. If it's one book you have to read about, about a company's success, it's called Built to Last by Jim Collins.

And, and, and he has the follow-up book, then, is Good to Great.

That's right, that's a great book.

And I have— that is a book I recommend to when I was in consulting, all my clients. When I came on as consultants with ECCB, I recommended it. And authentic-euphonium, right? Made to Last, that was the first one, and then Good to Great. Yes, these are essential reading for anyone, not just in business, in leadership, anywhere. I think very good. Excellent. Good job. Okay, so we have to wrap up in a few minutes. But I want to end that question. I have to ask Eddie that question. So, Marwen, I'm going to time you. I'm going to give you 2 minutes and a half. I'm going to give Dennis 1, and then I'm wrapping up our 5 minutes to take us to 9— I'm saying 9:55, sorry— but to take us to having England. And I'm so happy I didn't miss this panel. Listen, I traveled this morning. I said, listen, I'll have enough time to rest. I need to moderate this session, and this panel has just been absolutely fantastic. I know Julian says the last one is going to be the bomb, but this is it. But we must stay tuned for the last one. No, but what is also coming up is economic— the word that came up even while I was preparing and even listening to you, economic resilience. How do we talk about climate resilience and all other, but we need to begin even as a region to talk about economic resilience. What are some of the strategies we can put in place to be, as countries and as in, as businesses, to be economic resilient? That is yours.

All right, well, economic resilience. Well, economic resilience means that you, you watch your wallet. You, you don't run some things with too much fat, so you have to be very, very sure about what you're doing and what is the best way to get it done with the resources you have at the disposal and to keep reviewing it all the time. So it's about the basic economic context, um, what are your fixed costs, what's your marginal cost, what's your contribution effect, how do you get the volume. But just a couple of points with regard to some of the points which made by Dennis. We are small countries, all right, and the room at the top is always small in whatever country you go to. In England, the room at the top is small. In the US, all the billionaires know one another. So in the Caribbean, all the big businessmen will know one another and will know the politicians too. What is important is that politicians have to understand that you have to create the opportunity for the businesses to succeed, because if the businesses don't succeed, the economies won't and the countries won't. I think that's the most important point, um, and that you have to tailor your, your fiscal policy accordingly But economic resilience also means that your public service also has to be efficient, also has to be robust, and also has to be built to last. I think that's, that's the most important point— be built to last. And that means to, to resilience, being able to last means that you have to constantly reevaluate your performance, right, and test yourself against what the market determines. Now, I don't think that our public services do that.. And I don't think that our Caribbean businesses do enough of that, and that's what we have to take on. Drucker is absolutely correct in his very short work, was a seminal work which sort of encapsulated all of his life's work. It's called The Theory of the Business, and the bottom line he runs, he just gives about 4 little different pieces of advice, and I would recommend that particular article to everyone. But at the same token, all right, businesses cannot depend on government for their success, but government does have to depend on the business sector for its own success in terms of managing economy. Now, that's a, that's a huge difference. And unfortunately, we've inherited, um, as a region, we've inherited some of the, um, I would have to say the inbuilt cultures of our metropolitan predecessors, right, that when they started off their government services, they essentially were left-wing. So our governments tend to be left-wing, and there's this dynamic of, of, of, how shall we call it, mistrust. We have to get up, we have to get past that, we have to get past that, and we have to get— all right, we have to get past that. If there's one, if there's a key impediment to moving the countries forward and moving businesses forward is that level of mistrust. The public sector mistrusts the private sector, right? The labor mistrusts both. And I leave it to that.

Thank you so much, Mariana, for that. And Dennis, your final take on— all right, economic resilience.

Well, the only thing I would say, right, to wrap up everything, because a lot of things has been said, is that we have everything that we need to grow, and particularly the people of the region. And I always judge that by saying, how is it— and this, this is, this applies between companies also— how is it that someone that does not do well in Jamaica goes abroad and does so very well? Because of the environment that they're in. So companies, we find people moving from one company to the next, and they don't do well at one and do well at another. It's the environment. So the environment is important. People, in a world where companies small and large are homogeneous because you can, a small company can seem like a big company on the internet, right? The most important ingredient is people and how you set that environment for them to be productive.

Thank you. Once you see Julian Rogers on the stage, you know it's time to wrap up. And so I will— I have to thank Denise and Mariano for this great insight and for the panel, the participants who have been cheering you on. And one of the points I just want to pull in, because I think we've touched on others, is the whole question about our ability of risk and recognizing, because someone said, you know, we don't recognize what we have until someone comes to show us, and then someone say, exactly, look at this panel here. And again, I think if all of that economic resilience and all how we move forward is an acceptance and a recognition of the talents that we possess, of the skills and the competencies, and we network with others to grow and to, and to, and to shape it and to maybe even get ideas. But there has to be a first acceptance and a confidence in self that we have what it takes to cope with the challenges of the economy for greater success for our countries and our businesses. And with that, I want to thank you, my panelists, for such a fantastic presentation today. I want to thank the participants and more also importantly, I want to thank Dale and Francis for the opportunity they've given us for this discussion and for me to moderate the session.

Thank you. And thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you very much. Wow, what a powerful session. And what I found very interesting, Valda, is the is that both Mario, Mariano, and, um, and one, yeah, Chuck, uh, Dennis, Dennis remain very, are very optimistic about the future of the region, uh, point to clear solutions, uh, for moving away all the barriers and impediments really. And, um, it will be interesting to see If anybody picks that up, pick up a few of those things and move us on because we really need to move it. Dennis's comments about the CSME, for instance, I found very interesting, and Mariano's focus on the successes of a number of enterprises across this region pointing out that it is possible and it could be even bigger development as far as the economy is concerned if we get a couple of things right. All right, so we coming up to the top of the hour, Francis, and, uh, I know that I've literally set people up, have I?

Yes, let me, let me do a reset. And yes, unfortunately it'll probably bounce you, bounce you out, but that's your thing.