By: Staff Writer
March 13, 2026
The Caribbean Export Development Agency’s top official said on an Inter-American Development Bank Annual Group meeting panel on Thursday that the challenge with regional integration is that the level of scale makes it uncompetitive.
Dr. Damie Sinanan, Executive Director of the Caribbean Export Development Agency, said on the panel, “Regional Integration Reimagined,” that: “The Caribbean region comprises mainly of islands. Most of them are small island developing states, and we tend to look at the Caribbean as a monolith, but in fact, it’s 15 different disparate states, each exporting different things, each trading different things, each focusing on different avenues towards growth. So that essentially presents a number of challenges when it comes to regional integration.
First of all is that being small island developing states, many of the islands lack scale. So we’re talking majority of the business of micro, small and medium sized enterprises. In fact, 80 percent of the businesses in the Caribbean region are micro, small and medium sized enterprises.
“So the level of scale required to trade cross borders tends to make it uncompetitive.”
The Caribbean economy is characterized by a diverse, small-state structure, with a total regional GDP estimated at roughly $368 billion, representing approximately 0.32 percent of the world’s total GDP. While the region is highly dependent on tourism and services, it is undergoing significant structural changes driven by a massive boom in oil production, particularly in Guyana.
Sinanan also saod: “Secondly, the geographic disparity that we face results in extremely high transportation costs. It is very expensive to move goods across the Caribbean region through shipping channels, mainly because there it’s a chicken and egg situation.
“There’s a lack of shipping lines due to a lack of volume. So how do we balance those, those two challenges.”
“Moving people across the region is extremely difficult as well. Some of the airline costs to fly from one island to another is extremely expensive. In fact, I would not doubt it was cheaper for me to fly from Barbados to Paraguay than it would have been to fly from Barbados to Jamaica.”
He added: “And of course, we have to mention the climate shocks and the environmental challenges that small islands face. All of these are extremely strong challenges towards regional integration, so the Caribbean has to look towards trading services.
“Many of the islands are service based economies, and most and services exports are really essential to the economic growth and Caribbean Export Development Agency, we see services exports as a major pathway towards regional integration.”