The Caribbean is be­ing urged to adopt a mod­ern ap­proach to busi­ness to in­crease in­ter­est from in­ter­na­tion­al in­vestors and push sus­tain­able growth through­out the re­gion.

Dr Damie Sinanan, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the Caribbean Ex­port De­vel­op­ment Agency, is mak­ing this call ahead of the up­com­ing Caribbean In­vest­ment Fo­rum.

The fo­rum, which will al­low Caribbean busi­ness­es to present in­vest­ment projects to prospec­tive in­ter­na­tion­al in­vestors, is set to be held from Oc­to­ber 5–7, 2026 at the Hilton Bar­ba­dos Re­sort in Bridgetown, Bar­ba­dos.

Sinanan said it is im­per­a­tive to make the Caribbean at­trac­tive to new in­vest­ment op­tions as the re­gion cur­rent­ly is quite vul­ner­a­ble to sev­er­al geopo­lit­i­cal shocks and cli­mate change. As a re­sult he feels the fo­rum is “need­ed now much more than ever” as the re­gion is in need of cru­cial in­vest­ment and fund­ing for dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, green econ­o­my tran­si­tion, trans­porta­tion lo­gis­tics and food se­cu­ri­ty.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the Caribbean re­gion is an ex­treme­ly vul­ner­a­ble re­gion. We’re vul­ner­a­ble to every­thing from cli­mate shocks to geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions, and we see what’s go­ing on in the world right now in un­der both ar­eas with cli­mate, with dis­as­ters, with hur­ri­canes, as al­so with what’s go­ing on in the in­ter­na­tion­al eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment,” said Dr Sinanan in a Zoom in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian.

“As a Caribbean re­gion, we have to seek our own des­tiny. We can’t stand by and wait for things to hap­pen and be re­ac­tive. As busi­ness­es, we have to be proac­tive. We have to go out and seek our own for­tunes, and a way to do that is to go out and at­tract in­vest­ments, so that we can con­tin­ue to grow and scale our busi­ness­es and move away from de­pen­den­cies on the tra­di­tion­al re­la­tion­ships that may not be there, that may be frag­ment­ed.”

Sinanan felt the Caribbean has for far too long adopt­ed a dat­ed ap­proach to busi­ness de­spite hav­ing much to of­fer to the glob­al mar­ket.

“We have to look at adopt­ing more of these types of in­no­va­tions and tech­nolo­gies in the re­gion. And the CIF is po­si­tioned just to en­cour­age that sort of thing, be­cause as we know, to use these tech­nolo­gies re­quires a lot of mon­ey. But if we can get the re­quired in­vestors to re­al­ly help us ac­quire the farms and the tech­nolo­gies, it can re­al­ly con­tribute sig­nif­i­cant­ly to im­prov­ing our food se­cu­ri­ty and get­ting us clos­er to that goal of re­duc­ing our im­ports by 2030.”

He said, “The Caribbean re­gion, un­for­tu­nate­ly, has lagged be­hind in terms of in­no­va­tion and in terms of us­ing, util­is­ing, and de­vel­op­ing tech­nol­o­gy. If you look at our com­par­i­son to oth­er de­vel­op­ing re­gions, well, quote un­quote, de­vel­op­ing re­gions in the world, like Africa, like Asia, you will see the Caribbean re­gion is lag­ging be­hind.”

He felt, in par­tic­u­lar, small­er busi­ness­es had not seized op­por­tu­ni­ties cre­at­ed by the evo­lu­tion of tech­nol­o­gy and its im­pact on busi­ness strat­e­gy.

“Our small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es need to em­brace tech­nol­o­gy and not be scared of it, be­cause you hear all these things like AI and blockchain and so on, and every­body ap­proach­es it with cau­tion and is very hes­i­tant to em­brace it ful­ly. We have to re­alise that this is the way of the fu­ture, and if we don’t do it, oth­er re­gions are go­ing to do it, and we’re go­ing to be left be­hind,” Dr Sinanan said.

“So, we have to stop fear­ing tech­nol­o­gy, and we have to em­brace it and see how we can in­cor­po­rate it in­to our busi­ness­es and our op­er­a­tions. If we do that, we can keep pace with the glob­al econ­o­my and con­tin­ue to com­pete in the glob­al econ­o­my.”

He felt there were clear us­age cas­es for tech­nol­o­gy with re­gard to re­cur­ring re­gion­al con­cerns such as trans­porta­tion and food se­cu­ri­ty. He not­ed that this may be key in ad­dress­ing the lat­ter, not­ing the re­gion’s on­go­ing goal to re­duce food im­ports by 25 per cent had so far on­ly found suc­cess in Guyana.

He said, “Guyana has in­vest­ed very heav­i­ly in agri­cul­ture pro­duc­tion be­cause they have the land space, but we have to look at some of the oth­er small is­land states in the re­gion that may not nec­es­sar­i­ly have the land space. We have to look at tech­nol­o­gy, so we see new tech­nol­o­gy com­ing in the area of agri­cul­ture. So con­tain­er farm­ing, hy­dro­pon­ics, us­ing drone tech­nolo­gies, us­ing apps. These are some of the new tech­nolo­gies that are hap­pen­ing that can im­prove crop yields and make us have high­er val­ue agri­cul­ture prod­ucts.”

The Caribbean Ex­port ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor al­so felt the re­gion need­ed greater uni­ty in terms of pol­i­cy to at­tract large in­vestors, as frag­men­ta­tion worked against the Caribbean.

“The Caribbean is­lands are just too small. Our do­mes­tic mar­kets in­di­vid­u­al­ly are just too small. In­vestors, if they have to look at a mil­lion-dol­lar tick­et size or 100-mil­lion-dol­lar tick­et size, it’s the same due dili­gence and every­thing that they will have to do. So they will al­ways go for a larg­er tick­et size, and the on­ly way to make a tick­et size work like that is we have to have these sort of cross-bor­der in­vest­ments where in­vestors can in­vest their mon­ey in­to a larg­er mar­ket,” he said.

Dr Sinanan al­so felt the re­gion had the ca­pac­i­ty to at­tract in­vestors in­to lo­gis­tic, which could al­so open up new av­enues for trans­porta­tion and trade routes.

He said, “We have to look at trans­port and lo­gis­tics. We have to look at mov­ing peo­ple around, goods and ser­vices around the re­gion, which will make you know our lives eas­i­er if we can im­prove our trans­porta­tion and lo­gis­tics.

“I’m see­ing def­i­nite­ly an ap­petite for our cur­rent air­lines and our cur­rent groups more com­pet­i­tive, and I think car­go is the way to do that, and it goes back to what I was say­ing be­fore. Planes are trav­el­ling across the re­gion, but they’re trav­el­ling with just pas­sen­gers, and most of their car­go holds are emp­ty,” said Sinanan, “If we can en­cour­age more car­go mov­ing in be­tween the is­lands, that’s a way to make our cur­rent routes more com­pet­i­tive, even our in­ter­na­tion­al routes more com­pet­i­tive.”

He con­tin­ued, “You have air­lines that are com­ing in from Eu­rope, air­lines that are com­ing in from Pana­ma and again the car­go space tends to be low. If we can find a way to in­crease trade be­tween the is­lands, as it in­volves goods, that’s a way to again make our cur­rent air­line routes more com­pet­i­tive and not just en­cour­age com­pe­ti­tion.”

Sinanan said that while there had been chal­lenges such as nat­ur­al gas short­ages im­pact­ing T&T’s petro­chem­i­cal pro­duc­tion, many sec­tors like man­u­fac­tur­ing and tourism ser­vices ex­hib­it strong growth po­ten­tial across the Caribbean.

He ex­plained that apart from mod­ernising its ap­proach, Caribbean busi­ness­es should look be­yond tra­di­tion­al North Amer­i­can and West­ern Eu­ro­pean cor­ri­dors. The CIF cur­rent­ly has part­ner­ships with the Eu­ro­pean Union and the African Ex­port-Im­port Bank (Afrex­im­bank), in a bid to de­vel­op such con­nec­tions.