One hundred years ago on April 15, 1912, the RMS Titanic sank after hitting an iceberg in the Northern Atlantic. In the moments just after the collision, many lifeboats left the Titanic without being filled to capacity. At that time, passengers thought they had a choice between a lifeboat floating in the dark, icy-cold waters of the Atlantic or a massive ship, still afloat, lights still in tact and some measure of normalcy. It is only with the benefit of hindsight that we know that passengers who chose to stay on board as opposed to go into the lifeboat made a wrong and deadly choice. In the heat of the moment during the early stages of the disaster, the choice would not have been so clear cut. So we come to the West Indies, a group of islands in the Caribbean Sea that have been independent nations for just around 50 years. Are we on a slow trip to oblivion, sinking under the weight of individual hubris?
There were many who felt that the Titanic could never sink. Just as in the initial moments after the Titanic struck the iceberg, the outcome for the islands that make up the West Indies is not so clear, but there are warnings signs aplenty. This region is one of the most heavily-indebted regions on the planet and would make the problems in Europe pale by comparison. Yet we go along business as usual without a care in the world. In terms of debt as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP), St Kitts is right up there at a ratio of 180 per cent and is seeking to restructure its debt. Jamaica, with a ratio of 120 per cent, has already done the same and it is quite possible that Antigua and Grenada may soon follow this path. Amongst the others Barbados, St Lucia, St Vincent and Dominica all carry debt burdens above 80 per cent of GDP. More importantly, all the aforementioned islands because of the structure and size of their respective economies are unlikely to be able to grow their way out of trouble.
Integration
The obvious way to become more important on a global scale, to increase the size of your markets, to create a healthier economic dynamic, is to integrate. Yet, this represents the biggest collective failure across the entire region, including for T&T.
Here at home, surely we must realise that we are not very competitive on a global scale and that the captive markets of Caricom provide a nurturing ground for our export development. However, we must also ensure that we enact policies to nurture our regional markets for if these markets are not sustainable then our non energy exports also become unsustainable. There is a symbiotic nature to our relationships in the Caribbean. The Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME) seem, at this stage, like nothing more than a dream. To think that five years ago during the 2007 Cricket World Cup held in the West Indies we were able to manage the free movement of people across the Caribbean islands without hiccup or fuss. Our inability to build on this initiative is beyond comprehension. In a region where a few kilometres of sea represents a chasm, the most recent attempt to bring the islands closer in the form of a low-cost airline seems to have failed. Respective territories have either been rejoicing at the demise or are indifferent to the outcome, failing to understand the pressing need to build bridges across the islands.
Insularity
The free movement of people across the islands of the West Indies and making such moves affordable are critical to our sustainability. This is so simply because greater communication conflicts with the insularity that plagues this region. A less insular region is certainly capable of producing much more than the status quo, but yet often times the excuse for insularity is that those on the outside do not understand the issues and the circumstances of a particular nation state.
The April 2012 edition of the Harvard Business Review focused on the science of building great teams. The analysis showed that great teams communicate frequently, talk and listen in equal measure and engage in frequent informal communications.
The paper went on to point out that how people communicate was more important that what was communicated. Isolation certainly does not contribute to an effective team.
Before speaking about great teams, can we in the West Indies even function as a basic team? In a West Indian context, the bottom line is that once we continue to restrict the exchange and interaction between the people of the Caribbean in order to serve insular political ends, we will continue to experience a downward economic spiral and no amount of debt relief or external funding is going to change that. The West Indian nation has struck its iceberg (unsustainable debt levels) and what happens next will determine whether we sink or swim. Just as with the Titanic, many, especially our politicians, are oblivious to the likely outcome. The final characteristic of a great team is that it absorbs information from outside the group. Given our insular nature, it is unlikely that those who need to take note will note anything written in this article.
Flawed priorities
Recently, the Easter Monday holiday in the United Kingdom prompted an analysis of the cost of bank holidays to the UK economy. It is estimated that such holidays cost the UK economy upwards of US$30 billion. In the West Indies, we are oblivious to such metrics. St Vincent, with a population of 120,000 people, has an onerous debt burden. Cricket tourism is one of the "in" things on the islands, so this country was given three international cricket matches in the current cricket tour of Australia. In celebration of a West Indian victory, the prime minister declared a national holiday. Was any consideration given to the lost productivity as a result of this unscheduled holiday in the same way that the UK considers their economy? Yet we expect developed countries such as the UK to bail us out of our economic plight, either directly or indirectly, through the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Who would have been serving the tourists during this unscheduled holiday? If there were no tourists en mass for the matches, what was the justification for scheduling three matches in a country with such a s small population.
This shows up the quality of our collective decision making and, at the end of the day, as each territory scrambles for a piece of the cricketing pie, if the people of the West Indies could have moved around the islands much more freely and at lower costs, then it would matter less where these matches are held. The failure to grasp the opportunity while there is still time, is likely to come back to haunt us in the future. Greece is a problem, Spain is becoming one and Argentina have just put themselves on the radar as another potential economic trouble spot. It should be obvious that multilateral lending agencies, such as the IMF and the World Bank, will prioritise their funding towards the larger and strategically more important countries. If there comes a time when there is insufficient funds or a lack of will to bail out troubled West Indian economies, where do we turn? It should be clear that much of our problems are of our making, and it should also be clear that as a region, we need to take charge of finding a solution. The iceberg has been struck. Do we reach for the lifeboats and try to escape or will we manage to keep the ship afloat?
Ian Narine is a broker registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
