The Caribbean Ex­port De­vel­op­ment Agency (Caribbean Ex­port), in col­lab­o­ra­tion with, Trinidad & To­ba­go Coali­tion of Ser­vice In­dus­tries (TTC­SI) and Deutsche Gesellschaft f�r In­ter­na­tionale Zusam­me­nar­beit (GIZ) GmbH host­ed the 5th Man­age­ment Con­sult­ing Sym­po­sium at the Hy­att Re­gency, Trinidad from Sep­tem­ber 10. The meet­ing of over 75 Car­i­fo­rum man­age­ment con­sul­tants and con­sult­ing firms from Eu­rope, South Amer­i­ca and Africa end­ed on Sep­tem­ber 12.

The im­por­tance of the man­age­ment con­sult­ing in­dus­try to the Caribbean was laid clear by Chief Op­er­at­ing Of­fi­cer, An­tho­ny Brad­shaw who stat­ed: "Glob­al­ly the man­age­ment con­sult­ing in­dus­try is one of the fastest grow­ing sec­tors and in a 2010 study com­mis­sion by the agency, the glob­al mar­ket for con­sult­ing ser­vices was ex­pect­ed to reach US350 bil­lion" and thus is a pri­or­i­ty sec­tor for the agency.

"Man­age­ment con­sult­ing can be con­sid­ered to be high val­ue added in­dus­try with a heavy ex­port ori­en­ta­tion, which has the po­ten­tial to make a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to ad­dress [the] needs of the re­gion­al mar­ket, which pro­vides many op­por­tu­ni­ties for our ser­vice providers" said Sen­a­tor Vas­ant Bharath, Min­is­ter of Trade, In­dus­try and In­vest­ment.

At the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny dig­ni­taries ex­pressed their grat­i­tude to­ward Caribbean Ex­port for tak­ing the ini­tia­tive to or­gan­ise such an im­por­tant meet­ing of man­age­ment con­sul­tants as it is viewed as "part of a wider Aid for Trade pro­gramme to as­sist the pri­vate sec­tor in the Caribbean to take ad­van­tage of the Car­i­fo­rum - EU Eco­nom­ic Part­ner­ship Agree­ment" ac­cord­ing to Daniela Tra­macere, Chargee d'Af­faires, Del­e­ga­tion of the Eu­ro­pean Union to T&T.

Tra­macere al­so en­cour­aged Caribbean man­age­ment con­sul­tants to take ad­van­tage of the op­por­tu­ni­ties pub­lished on the Eu­ro­peaid web­page in view of the EU be­ing the biggest de­vel­op­ment co­op­er­a­tion donor in the world.

This 5th Man­age­ment Con­sult­ing Sym­po­sium un­der the theme Strate­gic Al­liances for De­vel­op­ment the sym­po­sium en­gaged re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al ex­perts to bring re­newed fo­cus to es­tab­lish­ing strate­gic al­liances and gen­er­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for Car­i­fo­rum man­age­ment con­sult­ing firms to ex­ploit the Car­i­fo­rum-EU Eco­nom­ic Part­ner­ship Agree­ment (EPA) and those in the emerg­ing mar­kets.

This key top­ic for dis­cus­sion by a fo­rum of over 75 Car­i­fo­rum man­age­ment con­sul­tants was the strat­e­gy re­quired for in­creas­ing scope, ex­port com­pet­i­tive­ness and economies of scale.

A ma­jor ac­tiv­i­ty on the three day agen­da was the se­ries of busi­ness to busi­ness match­mak­ing ses­sions with EU con­sult­ing firms fa­cil­i­tat­ed by Caribbean Ex­port in or­der to gen­er­ate busi­ness and thus in­crease the pen­e­tra­tion of the EU mar­ket by CAR­I­FO­RUM firms. This was a high­ly suc­cess­ful facet of the 4th meet­ing with a num­ber of con­sult­ing firm re­port­ing pos­i­tive part­ner­ships and suc­cess­ful bids as a re­sult.

"Our firm has been able to part­ner with sev­en of the Car­i­fo­rum con­sul­tants/con­sult­ing firm present at the sym­po­sium on pro­pos­als, three of which were suc­cess­ful bids," said Pernille Fis­ch­er Boul­ter, CITP, Kisserup In­ter­na­tion­al Trade Roots Inc. & Kisserup Eu­rope.Thus, man­age­ment con­sult­ing can pro­vide many op­por­tu­ni­ties for co-op­er­a­tion be­tween con­sult­ing firms in Car­i­fo­rum, Eu­rope and glob­al­ly.

"The Ger­man Gov­ern­ment sup­ports this co-op­er­a­tion as it is a cen­tre­piece for the EPA be­tween Car­i­fo­rum and the EU. Trade and de­vel­op­ment are two sides of the same coin, and strength­en­ing busi­ness co-op­er­a­tion can make a sub­stan­tial con­tri­bu­tion to a bet­ter fu­ture for the Caribbean" said Ull­rich Kinne, Charge d'Af­faires, of the Ger­man Em­bassy in Port of Spain.