Report of Symposium on EconomicTransformation and Job Creation:New Governance Challenges

The University of the West Indies in collaboration with theCommonwealth Secretariat convened a Symposium entitled "EconomicTransformation and Job Creation: New Governance Challenges" at theRegional Headquarters of the University of The West Indies from 30 Mayto 1 June 2012.

The Symposium was attended by representatives from the InternationalMonetary Fund (IMF), Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), pastand present political representatives from various CARICOM MemberStates, members of State Boards and Parastatal Organizations fromCARICOM Governments, the University of the West Indies and otherTertiary Education Institutions, and Trade Unions in the Caribbean.

The Representatives addressed the central issue from a number ofclearly defined yet interrelated perspectives. They first examined pastexperiences and what lessons could be learned from them. From therethey went on to look at what were the successful platforms that had beencreated in the past and how best these could be built upon. Also examinedwas the role which tertiary institutions had played and whether or not thisrole could be reshaped and redefined to meet existing and new challenges.In addition, they examined what were the current options for economictransformation and job creation.

It was against this background that the representatives determined toadvance some fundamental recommendations designed to form the basisof a policy Dialogue Paper for public dissemination and discussion ofall the issues relevant to the economic transformation of the Caribbeanregion and the attendant issue of job creation.

In their analysis of past experiences the representatives took noteof the fact that Governments in the region have in various ways beendealing with issues relative to job creation but only sporadically had theseGovernments been pre-occupied with resolving them.

A number of reasons were advanced for this. It was felt that the socialand political milieu historically was neither youth oriented nor predisposedto training them to take advantage of technological advances that wereimpacting on the region's economies. As low paying, labour intensivejobs were as a consequence replaced by high technology applications, thisserved to exacerbate an already difficult unemployment situation.

This advance in technology, often described as the Third IndustrialRevolution, required new thinking within the larger forum of a collectiveenterprise rather than in the more narrow confines of separate governmentinitiatives. In the absence of such new thinking within a larger frameworkcomprising, for example, other Governments in an associated network ofgovernance, national job creating endeavours such as import substitutionand incentives programmes have proven difficult to be applied.

Such difficulties, it was noted, were significantly increased in thefurther absence of social capital and social trust. The Representatives wereunanimous in their view that good governance was the key to effectiveeconomic transformation and consequently, to job creation. The qualityof leadership mattered, they asserted, and ought not to be influenced bywhat was seen as a pervasive "lax culture of implementing rules".

In addressing how best to build on the region's successes the Representativesdeliberately avoided attempting to catalogue such success. Instead, they tookthe view that the current age of information and technological advancesdemanded a new and different approach towards ensuring that any enterprise,private and government, was managed successfully.

Knowledge management was seen as the key to economic and socialdevelopment. For success to be sustainable, to be competitive and to createa solid platform for growth it had to be rooted in sound managementpractices that were informed and driven by centres of knowledge excellence.In this context human capital became more extensively utilized with aconsequential impact on job creation.

It was also in this context that the Representatives discussed therole which tertiary institutions and other centres for training as well asfor research and development should play in the process of economictransformation and job creation. It was felt that while Universities shouldcontinue their current role of expanding intellectual horizons, they alsoneeded to become more an integral part of society through a greaterinvolvement in the regional development process, through curriculumchanges and more seminars and symposia that directly address the practicalaspects of regional economic transformation.

The representatives noted that an essential pillar for success was theaspect of Research and...