Facilitating trade in service industry
Having recognized Barbados' limited endowment of natural resources, successive Barbadian governments have placed the Barbadian people at the heart of the country's development process.
Free education up to the tertiary level has been pivotal in developing the island's human resources to a point where it enjoys a comparative advantage, not only in tourism and financial services, but also in a range of other high value-added services such as information and communication technologies (ICTs), creative and cultural industries, medical tourism, and educational services.
Michelle Hustler-Small, senior project officer of the Barbados Coalition of Service Industries |
Through trade missions, the Barbados Coalition of Service Industries (BCSI) is committed to facilitating trade in Barbadian services in the region and beyond.
"The world is our oyster, as they say, and it has become a global village, so it is just a question of connecting and getting there," says Wynthrop Catwell, president of the BCSI Board of Directors.
Having already led successful trade missions within the Caribbean, BCSI is starting to look beyond.
"I think that when the BCSI had its first trade mission two and a half years ago, there was some hesitancy about exporting services within the region. Now there is an overwhelming response, and BCSI is encouraging exports elsewhere beyond the Caribbean Single Market and Economy. Just last year, people have been changing 100 percent," BCSI Senior Project Officer Michelle Hustler-Small adds.
In the works are trade missions to Africa and North America, and Catwell believes the Barbadian government may well endorse a trip to China as well.
Sagicor is a Barbadian service provider. It has successfully expanded beyond the region. |
"I am sure the government would sanction that sort of thing because it would increase the business opportunities both here and in China," Hustler-Small adds.
"BCSI is also willing to facilitate an inbound mission from China. We would help to form relationships with businesspeople here for delegations interested in coming to Barbados."
Encompassing 40 Barbadian service organizations and a vibrant body of individual members, the BCSI sees itself as all-inclusive, representative of all types of services available in Barbados. BCSI was formed in 2002 as a part of a larger movement to mobilize the regional services sectors throughout the CARICOM.
Catwell says, "We believe that because of what is happening in Europe, what is happening globally, that this region needs to unite. The Caribbean single market is one way to do it, and the economy would bring us together in a way that we never had the opportunity to do before. One can see that in the future, with the natural resources that are available in some of the other countries combined with the resources in Barbados, such as human resources and intellectual, when we bring those things together we believe that this region will be a force to be reckoned with. We think that it is the place at the moment that is emerging in the world."
(Shanghai Start 02/01/2007 page3)
