While the world is more un­cer­tain than ever, the Caribbean is be­ing urged to be de­ci­sive in its ac­tions.

This was the fun­da­men­tal point raised dur­ing a pan­el dis­cus­sion at the 2nd Wider Caribbean Re­gion­al Risk Con­fer­ence 2025 in Bar­ba­dos.

The pan­el ti­tled, Eco­nom­ic ten­sions, un­cer­tain­ty and geoe­co­nom­ic con­fronta­tions: Nav­i­gat­ing these new glob­al eco­nom­ic re­la­tions, sought to push for a so­lu­tion-ori­ent­ed dis­cus­sion.

The pan­el, mod­er­at­ed by Caribbean econ­o­mist and ad­vi­sor Mar­la Dukha­ran, in­clud­ed Lil­ia Bu­run­ci­uc, di­rec­tor for Caribbean coun­tries, World Bank; Tim­o­thy An­toine, Gov­er­nor of East­ern Caribbean Cen­tral Bank; Dr Mar­lene Attzs, de­vel­op­ment econ­o­mist and lec­tur­er, De­part­ment of Eco­nom­ics, Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine cam­pus;. Dil­ka Es­co­bar, deputy di­rec­tor gen­er­al of the di­rec­torate of in­vest­ments, con­ces­sions and state risk, Min­istry of Econ­o­my and Fi­nance, Pana­ma; Monique French, chief risk of­fi­cer, CIBC Caribbean and Ian Du­rant, vice pres­i­dent cor­po­rate ser­vices, Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank.

Dukha­ran urged that the con­fer­ence should not be an ex­cuse to dwell in the dark­ness, al­though glob­al un­cer­tain­ty was at an all-time high.

“There’s a chart that I ac­tu­al­ly want­ed to show on the screen, but I didn’t have a chance. It’s a chart that shows the world un­cer­tain­ty in­dex. And this world un­cer­tain­ty in­dex, if you see it, it’s got lots of peaks and troughs, and then on the ex­treme right of the chart, it’s high­er than it has ever been. It is ac­tu­al­ly 50 per cent high­er now than it was dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. So in oth­er words, we have more than 50 per cent more un­cer­tain­ty glob­al­ly now than we had at the height of the pan­dem­ic, which is to me, a bit un­be­liev­able,” she said.

How­ev­er, she ex­plained that there were sev­er­al ini­tia­tives, some of which had been cham­pi­oned or pi­o­neered in the re­gion, which were be­gin­ning to bear fruit.

“We have a lot to be pos­i­tive about as well. For ex­am­ple, we have glob­al in­sti­tu­tions like the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice, for the first time ever, de­liv­er­ing an opin­ion on the le­gal oblig­a­tion of states re­gard­ing the cli­mate crimes cri­sis. That is huge. That on­ly hap­pened a few weeks ago. We have the UN Gen­er­al As­sem­bly mak­ing progress with ne­go­ti­a­tions for a glob­al tax con­ven­tion, which will end the OECD and pos­si­bly the FATF role in gov­ern­ing and un­fair­ly gov­ern­ing and end­ing glob­al tax abuse and il­lic­it fi­nan­cial flows,” said Dukha­ran.

“And we have the BRICS in­sti­tu­tion. There’s a meet­ing right now, but we have the BRICS in­sti­tu­tion im­ple­ment­ing an al­ter­na­tive to SWIFT which fur­ther erodes the pri­ma­cy of the US dol­lar and its dom­i­nance in in­ter­na­tion­al trade and pay­ments. All of these are very pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ments. The Glob­al South alone ac­counts for over 80 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion of this plan­et. There is a lot for us in the glob­al south to be pos­i­tive about. And so I en­cour­age you to not think about curs­ing the dark­ness. “

Gov­er­nor An­toine stressed the need to be proac­tive giv­en geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions, al­though he re­mind­ed the au­di­ence of wise words by for­mer Bar­ba­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Er­rol Wal­ton Bar­row, who urged the Caribbean to adopt neu­tral­i­ty while seek­ing its best in­ter­est.

“That means that we must take the ap­proach of nav­i­gat­ing the glob­al en­vi­ron­ment, the geoe­co­nom­ics and the geopol­i­tics with a strate­gic prag­ma­tism. Where we are not blind­ed or bound by our ide­ol­o­gy, but by our in­ter­est, a small state in a big, dan­ger­ous world. So that’s the over­rid­ing prin­ci­ple that must guide us in our re­la­tions. It has served us well, and it will con­tin­ue to serve us well, even in this pe­ri­od,” An­toine said.

How­ev­er, he said the Caribbean should be push­ing more ag­gres­sive­ly to re­duce its food im­port bill, and in­crease pow­er gen­er­a­tion through its nat­ur­al re­sources.

“Why are we still im­port­ing 80 per cent of our food in this re­gion? And by the way, so I’m go­ing at food and nu­tri­tion se­cu­ri­ty, but by the way, eight in 10 deaths in our re­gion are com­ing from the non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases. Not on­ly is this food ex­pen­sive, but they’re killing us cul­ture process,” he said, “Why should we, with this blaz­ing sun­shine and every­body’s com­plain­ing how hot it is, still be pay­ing elec­tric­i­ty rates of US$0.35 to US$0.40 per kilo­watt an hour, how would we ever com­pete in terms of tourism with the Mex­i­cos of this world and oth­ers.”

Dukha­ran al­so lament­ed the fact that Cari­com had pushed back its 25 by 2025 plan to re­duce the food im­port bill to 2030.

An­toine said the Caribbean large­ly did not have the imag­i­na­tion or cre­ativ­i­ty at the mo­ment to ad­dress its known prob­lems.

“We have an op­por­tu­ni­ty in this re­gion, but we have to reimag­ine what it is we want. And there has to be a bold­ness, a now­ness and col­lec­tive ac­tion to get it done. I would want to speak specif­i­cal­ly about some con­crete ac­tions on col­lec­tive ac­tion,” he said.

French, the chief risk of­fi­cer of CIBC Caribbean how­ev­er, point­ed to the need to col­lect and utilise da­ta so that the nec­es­sary ac­tion could be tak­en.

“We need to fo­cus on what we can con­trol. The ex­am­ples are many,” she said, “We’re in 2025, the world is dig­i­tal. Da­ta mat­ters, and so in terms of in­for­ma­tion and get­ting in­for­ma­tion on the ground in a com­mu­ni­ca­tion sense, that mat­ters. But al­so, very im­por­tant­ly, lever­ag­ing the da­ta we have in our coun­tries and re­gion­al­ly to em­pow­er the ease of do­ing busi­ness. We of­ten talk about we do not have da­ta. I mean, when I go to coun­tries, I find ac­tu­al­ly we do have da­ta, but we don’t know about it. It’s a hid­den se­cret, or it’s locked in vaults, so to speak, be­hind cer­tain walls.”

She con­tin­ued, “If you can ag­gre­gate it and cre­ate in­sights, I think it’s very im­por­tant to al­low our peo­ple to use their imag­i­na­tion to cre­ate so­lu­tions that we in this room may not see, but that they can see and em­pow­er. “

Dr Attzs how­ev­er, not­ed it ap­peared that the Caribbean seemed to be in a state of risk paral­y­sis, giv­en that the re­gion was very much aware of the chal­lenges it faced, but lacked the nec­es­sary ac­count­abil­i­ty and re­silience to do what need­ed to be done.

She like Dukha­ran dis­liked the de­ci­sion to push back the 25 by 2025 ini­tia­tive, and in­stead urged the Caribbean to stick to its plans, us­ing Ja­maica’s Eco­nom­ic Pro­gramme Over­sight Com­mit­tee (EPOC) as a shin­ing ex­am­ple.

“I think if we were to think it through, it could pro­vide an op­por­tu­ni­ty for us to deal with the re­silience, iden­ti­fy­ing the tar­gets, but al­so pro­vid­ing an op­por­tu­ni­ty for us to be ac­count­able and trans­par­ent, but to help us keep our­selves hon­est, a la EPOC in Ja­maica. Per­haps there is an op­por­tu­ni­ty for us to learn from that and to repli­cate EPOCs at the na­tion­al lev­el and al­so at the re­gion­al lev­el,” she said.

The 2nd Wider Caribbean Re­gion­al Risk Con­fer­ence 2025 was held on Sep­tem­ber 3 to 4, 2025.

It was joint­ly host­ed by the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank (CDB), CCRIF SPC – the Caribbean and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca para­met­ric in­sur­ance fa­cil­i­ty and de­vel­op­ment in­sur­er, and CAF – De­vel­op­ment Bank of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.