The re­portage in the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian of a re­gion­al ex­pan­sion in the fo­cus of in­vest­ment out­reach of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Unit Trust com­pa­ny in­to the East­ern Caribbean, brings with it po­ten­tial­ly great news for in­di­vid­ual and cor­po­rate in­vestors across Cari­com.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, un­der the head­line “UTC: Re­gion­al ex­pan­sion a mile­stone”, both the UTC chair­man and ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor not­ed that in a stag­nant world econ­o­my hit by a num­ber of prob­lems, of which we in the re­gion have no say, in­vest­ment in the trust with­in the Cari­com area has been a strate­gic move­ment to in­cor­po­rate the tourism-ori­ent­ed economies of the East­ern Caribbean states. The pos­si­bil­i­ties are high­light­ed by the ex­pect­ed growth among East­ern Caribbean states of 4.1 per cent this year and 3.9 per cent in 2025.

But that is on­ly a sur­face pos­si­bil­i­ty for the in­vest­ment po­ten­tial of the UTC and its in­vestors. What is of even larg­er im­por­tance for the OECS econ­o­my, heav­i­ly de­pen­dent on tourism, is for a seed from this ini­tial over­ture of the UTC to grow at a deep and fun­da­men­tal lev­el in pro­duc­tion and in­no­va­tion to ser­vice the tourism in­dus­try.

Even a sur­face ex­am­i­na­tion of the decades-old tourism in­dus­try in the Caribbean will find that while it has pro­vid­ed ab­solute­ly need­ed jobs in the ser­vice sec­tors es­pe­cial­ly, it re­mains linked far more close­ly to im­port­ed prod­ucts and ser­vices to meet the needs of tourists. The in­fra­struc­ture, the food and drink, the para­pher­na­lia for ho­tel rooms, the ve­hi­cles to take the tourists around, the book­ings and more, are large­ly im­port­ed.

The fig­ures on the out­flow of the mon­ey spent in the re­gion by the tourists de­pict the re­al­i­ty that in cer­tain coun­tries, be­tween 70 and 85 per cent out of every dol­lar flows back out to the sup­pli­er economies of the North.

With the es­tab­lish­ment of an in­vest­ment fund in the East­ern Caribbean, the po­ten­tial must sure­ly ex­ist for the in­vest­ment re­turns to be ploughed in­to im­port-re­place­ment in­dus­tries and ser­vices in the OECS mem­ber coun­tries. So too in­vest­ment can ex­pand in­to man­u­fac­tur­ing and fi­nan­cial ser­vices in Trinidad and To­ba­go, Ja­maica and else­where.

The re­turn to vi­bran­cy of the tourism economies in the East­ern Caribbean, al­so holds great prospects for in­vest­ment com­ing in from Guyana, de­scribed in re­cent times by many in­ter­na­tion­al eco­nom­ic in­sti­tu­tions as “the world’s fastest-grow­ing econ­o­my”.

In­vest­ment by Guyana in ho­tel own­er­ship and con­struc­tion in the ser­vices and prod­ucts would be on the road to build­ing that in­clu­sive Cari­com econ­o­my, which has been pro­ject­ed for decades as a vi­tal so­lu­tion to the prob­lems of un­der­de­vel­op­ment in the re­gion.

One ad­di­tion­al ben­e­fit which can be gen­er­at­ed by the UTC-OECS ven­ture is the start of a pos­si­ble heal­ing of the dis­ease of in­su­lar­i­ty. It's a long-ex­tend­ing de­bil­i­tat­ing sick­ness which con­tin­ues to ex­ist and of­ten works against a clos­er and more mean­ing­ful in­te­gra­tion of the peo­ple and re­sources of the re­gion.

Vis­i­ble demon­stra­tion of the ben­e­fits of co­op­er­a­tion across the re­gion can be part of the cure for the mal­a­dy. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, those who con­trol the op­er­a­tions of the UTC must in­ter­pret their man­date to make the peo­ple of the re­gion con­scious of the need for in­vest­ment be­yond sim­ply “sav­ing for a rainy day”.