By: Staff Writer
May 10, 2022
The executive director of the Caribbean Export Development Agency (CEDA) said that the Caribbean is at a critical crossroads in building resilient economies and sustainable jobs and that the agency has to now “deliver where it matters.”
Deodat Maharaj, speaking at the agency’s first ever Annual Results Report, said that the Caribbean is at a place where the same old “business as usual cannot work.”
He also said: “I think what is very clear, is that to build a resilient Caribbean, and to give jobs and opportunity for our people, business has to play a central and important leadership role and we are caring for the Caribbean Export Development Agency, as the lead agency in the CARIFORUM Caribbean for private sector development, we take that responsibility quite seriously.”
Further arguing that the CEDA needs to “deliver where it matters,” Mr Maharaj added: “we need to deliver on the ground, to create jobs and opportunity for our people. We also understand quite clearly that the fast track COVID-19 recovery and to build a truly resilient Caribbean, we have to focus not only on business in a general sense, but when you look at the data 80 percent of employment and over 75 percent of our GDP, they come from micro small and medium scale enterprises.”
CEDA will be focusing on these micro and small enterprises going forward and “it’s not about talking. It’s not only about the workshops, but it’s about creating measurable impact where it matters on the ground,” he said.
Mr Maharaj also said: “So we are essentially a one stop shop, providing key and concrete and practical supportive support to businesses across the CARIFORUM Caribbean to generate jobs and opportunity for people.
He continued, “We work essentially in three areas, one: to advance exports to invaluable foreign exchange and why do we want to do that again is jobs and opportunity. We have been working closely with the European Union as we seek to take advantage of our businesses, to take advantage of the Economic Partnership Agreement with the EU and others as well. And to do this, we work directly with firms.
“The second area, we recognize quite clearly that, given the acute fiscal constraints businesses face across our region, the fact that we have limited capital available, we are largely ineligible for overseas development assistance, that foreign direct investment has to play a crucial role and therefore the work that we do on investment promotion is absolutely vital to advancing a transformational agenda for our region.
He added: “The third area has to do with services. We have creative people. We have brilliant people, but we need to commoditize our creativity, or culture our music our fashion to generate jobs and opportunity for people.
“But we realize that to have an ambitious agenda and to have a vision is good, but it’s not good enough. What we need to do, we need to back that with concrete action and to achieve that, we need to build strong partnerships.”
The CEDA has been partnering a great deal with the EU with regard to grant funding for the cultural sector and are now partnering with the International Trade Centre on services related initiatives.