Sean Nero

Pres­i­dent of the Caribbean Ship­ping As­so­ci­a­tion (CSA ) Grant­ley Stephen­son says cor­rup­tion in in­ter­na­tion­al trade is im­ped­ing growth of the re­gion's mar­itime busi­ness.Speak­ing at Mon­day's open­ing of the 12th Caribbean Ship­ping Ex­ec­u­tives Con­fer­ence in Freeport, Ba­hamas, Stephen­son said: "The as­so­ci­a­tion has pre­vi­ous­ly ad­dressed is­sues re­lat­ed to smug­gling of nar­cotics and through ear­li­er con­tacts with the Mar­itime Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil has been con­cerned about pira­cy.

"Cor­rup­tion gen­er­al­ly, not just smug­gling or pira­cy, ham­pers de­vel­op­ment and ef­fi­cien­cy. The CSA can­not be un­mind­ful of this re­al­i­ty as it seeks to pro­mote de­vel­op­ment. In­deed, the CSA can­not be un­mind­ful of any­thing that re­tards de­vel­op­ment and which places heav­ier bur­dens on the shoul­ders of the peo­ples of the re­gion."T&T be­ing rep­re­sent­ed at the con­fer­ence by a del­e­ga­tion that in­cludes Ash­ley Tay­lor, pres­i­dent of the Ship­ping As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (SATT) and Joanne Ed­wards Al­leyne, SATT gen­er­al man­ag­er.Stephen­son un­der­scored the need for na­tion­al as­so­ci­a­tions to in­di­vid­u­al­ly and col­lec­tive­ly work clos­er with the CSA's gen­er­al coun­cil to com­bat this prob­lem while, pro­mot­ing growth and ex­pan­sion.

He re­ferred to an ad­dress he made to SATT in Port-of-Spain at which he said na­tion­al as­so­ci­a­tions were the me­dia through which new ideas and best prac­tices for high­er lev­els of pro­duc­tion and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty could be trans­ferred to large and small states and ter­ri­to­ries.

"We need to lift the present re­la­tion­ship be­tween the CSA and na­tion­al ship­ping as­so­ci­a­tions to a new lev­el of in­ter­ac­tion and in­volve­ment. This new lev­el of co-op­er­a­tion and in­ter­ac­tion should be­gin with the cre­ation of a fo­rum with­in the CSA in which na­tion­al as­so­ci­a­tions meet to dis­cuss growth and ex­pan­sion and to ex­change ideas, ex­pe­ri­ences and so­lu­tions. Through such a fo­rum, na­tion­al as­so­ci­a­tions would ef­fec­tive­ly as­sist each oth­er. This par­tic­u­lar ini­tia­tive ex­em­pli­fies the age-old tru­ism uni­ty is strength. This con­fer­ence will there­fore see us tak­ing the first steps in for­mal­is­ing this fo­rum of na­tion­al ship­ping as­so­ci­a­tions, he said.He added: "The CSA is unique­ly poised to pro­mote re­gion­al de­vel­op­ment, rep­re­sent­ing as it does both pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tor in­ter­ests across the en­tire Caribbean area. The ex­change of in­for­ma­tion and ideas es­sen­tial to the de­vel­op­ment is crit­i­cal. As­sist­ing mem­bers to im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy and out­put and to meet the chal­lenges of change is an im­por­tant strat­e­gy at this time. How­ev­er, train­ing and the de­vel­op­ment of the hu­man re­source in the Caribbean ship­ping in­dus­try is a pri­or­i­ty con­cern of the CSA. This year, through un­prece­dent­ed co-op­er­a­tion with Man­zanil­lo In­ter­na­tion­al Ter­mi­nal, we were able to ex­pose two groups of con­tain­er ter­mi­nal per­son­nel to the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy and a new ap­proach to con­tain­er ter­mi­nal op­er­a­tions."