Economist Henri Ghesquiere, visiting professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, will be the keynote speaker at the Institute of Chartered Accountants of the Caribbean's (ICAC) 29th annual Caribbean conference. This year's conference is being hosted by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Jamaica (ICAJ) at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel in Kingston, Jamaica, from June 23 to 25. Ghesquiere, whose career at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) spanned nearly three decades-from 1978-2005-holds humanities and economics degrees from the University of Leuven in Belgium and earned his doctorate from Yale University. He has served in various senior capacities at the IMF, among them economist, mission head, and senior resident representative.
In a statement, the ICAC said Ghesquiere's considerable expertise in comparative development and applied macroeconomic policy makes him an apt commentator on economic initiatives critical for the transition from "developing" to "developed-world" status, a goal of many regional states. The ICAC said Ghesquiere's involvement in the development of growth-focused economic stabilisation policies has carried him to more than two dozen countries, including Venezuela, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Algeria, Ukraine and Brazil. Ghesquiere's seminal work is his book, Singapore's Success: Engineering Economic Growth, an indepth analysis of Singapore's metamorphosis, over four decades, into one of the fastest-growing states in the world. The author explores the prospects of expropriating some aspects of the Singaporean model to inform economic policy in other states.
Raymond Campbell, chairman of the 2011 conference planning committee, said the conference theme, Third to First: Going the Distance, draws its inspiration from Jamaicans' and other Caribbean nationals' "superlative achievements in track and field, science and literature, and acts as a metaphor for breaking new ground in business and national economic development, with accounting being the language of business."
For registration and other details, visit the conference Web site: www.conference.icaj.org