The Caribbean is in need of in­creased con­nec­tiv­i­ty as it seeks to re­cov­er fol­low­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

This was stressed by the Pres­i­dent of the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank Dr Hy­gi­nus “Gene” Leon in their An­nu­al Press Con­fer­ence held in Bar­ba­dos on Wednes­day.

The CDB pres­i­dent made the call for re­gion­al gov­ern­ments to step up with re­gard to the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Caribbean Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my.

“Giv­en the re­gion’s ex­pe­ri­ence over the 2020 to 2022 pe­ri­od, now is the time for us to re-imag­ine re­gion­al co-op­er­a­tion and in­te­gra­tion. And what this could mean for us as Caribbean cit­i­zens. I, there­fore, call for a re­newed com­mit­ment to ad­vance the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Cari­com and Sin­gle Mar­ket Econ­o­my CSME, there­by im­prov­ing the lives of the re­gion’s cit­i­zens through one, in­creas­ing mar­ket ac­cess for goods, ser­vices and peo­ple pro­vid­ing economies of scale, of­fer­ing greater em­ploy­ment and busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties and pro­vid­ing a plat­form for in­creased in­no­va­tion and dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion,” said Leon, who al­so urged the gov­ern­ment to step in to fill the void left fol­low­ing the liq­ui­da­tion of Li­at in 2020, as he ex­plained the ab­sence of the air­line has left trans­porta­tion with­in the East Caribbean at cri­sis lev­el.

“The demise of Li­at in 2020 meant the loss of air­lift from an av­er­age of 500 week­ly flights in 2019 to 50 flights in 2022. CDB, there­fore, views de­pend­able and cost-ef­fec­tive air trans­porta­tion ser­vices as es­sen­tial for the trans­for­ma­tion of sev­er­al of the re­gion’s economies. Con­se­quent­ly, to safe­guard the re­gion’s fu­ture, gov­ern­ments need to take de­ci­sive and in­te­grat­ed ac­tion to re­form the air trans­porta­tion op­er­at­ing en­vi­ron­ment,” Leon said.

Food se­cu­ri­ty was al­so a con­cern raised by Leon, who echoed con­cerns raised by Cari­com lead­ers about the need to re­duce our food im­port bill.

“Re­cent glob­al da­ta from the Unit­ed Na­tions in­di­cates that the cost of a healthy di­et is high­est in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, with the Caribbean, cur­rent­ly im­port­ing more than 80 per cent of the food we con­sume. Food sov­er­eign­ty must be a key col­lec­tive ob­jec­tive,” said the CDB pres­i­dent.