THE QUEST TO BUILD A MODERN, COMPETITIVE, MANY-SIDED, POST-COLONIAL ECONOMY WHICH IS AT ONCE NATIONAL, REGIONAL AND GLOBAL
BY
RALPH E. GONSALVES
PRIME MINISTER OF ST. VINCENT AND THE GRENADINES
THE ISSUE
Shortly after the election of the Unity Labour Party (ULP) government in March 2001, I presented, in structured form, our party’s strategic quest to build a modern, competitive, many-sided post-colonial economy which is at once national, regional, and global.
I emphasized then, as I have done repeatedly since, that each of the words of this strategic formulation is pregnant with real meaning. The words “modern” and “competitive” conjure up the application of science and technology, education and training, appropriate managerial techniques and a coherent, progressive frame for the social organisation of labour, to produce goods and services, in sufficient quantities, at competitive prices and quality for the national, regional, and global marketplace.
“Many-sided” simply means a viable diversification of saleable goods and services. The construct “post-colonial”, in this context, is profoundly economic in that it acknowledges that colonial-era preferences for our commodities are no longer available in an epoch of trade liberalisation and globalisation, save and except in any narrowly-circumscribed negotiated trade compact compatible with regional integration and the rules of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
This basic strategic framework recognizes that life, living, production, and reproduction in the “post-colonial” world, demand that all countries, but especially small ones like St. Vincent and the Grenadines, bring people to them to sell their goods and services and to develop simultaneously a sound base for the export of goods and services overseas.
Our people must thus work hard and smart in the targeted areas of the production of goods and services for the competitive market. No country owes us a living even though our friends and allies may assist us on our developmental path.
To us in the ULP, it is axiomatic that given the extant condition of our country’s small size, its relative scarcity of material resources, its historical legacy of underdevelopment, and its contemporary challenges arising from climate change, it is necessary and desirable that a carefully calibrated and flexible regional and foreign policy be pursued to fit our national interests within the context of settled international precepts and law, and bilateral and multi-lateral solidarity across nations globally.
The articulated strategic economic quest and the requisite regional and foreign policy emerge from the nature of our country’s condition, and, in turn, shape its very development.
In the national social and political economy, initiatives are taken in accord with the priorities of the people and their democratically-elected representatives in the context of the country’s material possibilities and limitations.
All-round development depends on pushing always the boundaries of our country’s possibilities, reducing its limitations as far as is humanly practicable, seeking to have these limitations transformed into possibilities and strengths, and working, in solidarity, with other countries to enlarge, and realize, the extent of our possibilities.
RELEVANT ECONOMIC HISTORY
Between 1763, when Britain first assumed suzerainty over our country, and the mid-1990s of an independent St. Vincent and the Grenadines, our national economy was based principally, at various times, on one of four major export commodities: Sugar, arrowroot, cotton, and bananas. Each of these agricultural products was cocooned, in its production and/or marketing, by domestic production supports and/or external market subsidies or preferences.
None of these commodities singly or in combination with each other and conjoined with minor crops (coconuts, plantains, ground provisions, fruits, vegetables, cocoa, coffee, cassava, tobacco) or livestock (cattle, goats, sheep, pigs) or artisanal fishing, was able to generate enough surplus to put the country on a self-sustaining trajectory.
Indeed, poverty, extreme hardship, and more, prevailed in those 240 years or so between 1763 and the 1990s; and only during slavery was there full employment, but in unspeakable harsh conditions of life. There has never been in St. Vincent and the Grenadines under “labour freedom” ___ the years since the emancipation of slaves in 1838 ___ a full or complete solution to the enduring problem of the limited absorptive capacity of the economy for labour.
Thus, full employment in the circumstances of a free society is yet to be achieved in St. Vincent and the Grenadines! But civic and political freedom, though accompanied by unemployment, is a condition absolutely to be always preferred to slavery or an overrule of colonialism and planter-merchant elites! And it must be admitted that since internal self-government in 1969, there has been considerable socio-economic development in St. Vincent and the Grenadines and the lifting markedly of our people’s condition of life and living.
Indeed, even when one finds a partial solution to significant unemployment as the ULP government did between 2001 and 2012, (as the Census data show), and subsequently, the alterations in the internal composition of the population has affected adversely the country’s capacity to tackle unemployment decisively.
Thus, although some 6,000 new jobs were created between 2001 and 2012, in a context or a more or less constant population size, the unemployment rate remained basically the same as in 2001 because of an increase in the actual working population occasioned by the fact that older persons (over 60-year olds) remained in job or acquired new jobs or became self-employed.
The internal composition of the population altered because of the one-third increase in the numbers of persons over 60 years of age. This is a new circumstance with huge socio-economic challenges.
The collapse of the sugar industry in 1880 ushered in over the next 75 or so years, up to 1956, a period in which no single crop was able to sustain economic dominance: There was an oscillation between sugar, arrowroot and cotton at various points, in concert with “minor crops”. Indeed, during the Second World War (1939 – 1945), ground provisions were ascendant, particularly in the regional market.
In 1956, bananas for the first time emerged as the major export commodity and remained so until towards the end of the 20th century when the market preferences for Caribbean bananas in the British market were almost completely dismantled consequent upon Britain’s entry into the European Union Single Market on January 01, 1993, and the “free market” challenges by the USA and Ecuador before the WTO thereafter.
As early as 1989, I had foreseen the banana market problem; indeed, I wrote about it in a monograph prior to the 1989 general elections. Prime Ministers John Compton and James Mitchell of St. Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines respectively denounced me as a “prophet of doom and gloom” and assured everyone that “it would be alright in the morning”.
Thus, precious time was lost by the political leadership in not launching an education revolution, re-orienting the economy, and building supportive infrastructure such as a jet airport and an international airport.
In short, the NDP did not address sufficiently or at all, the necessary and desirable bases for the building of a modern, competitive, many-sided, post-colonial economy. It dithered; it found refuge in a mere management of things, and sought not transformation or the laying of a credible base for transformation of the economy and production. Up to today, the NDP still looks forward to the past with no gaze at the future.
Between 1880 and 1956, St. Vincent and the Grenadines experienced massive emigration; so, too, in the 1960s to 1980s’ emigration and migrants’ remittances from abroad provided much relief.
The inter-censal data between 1991 and 2012 showed a slow-down in migration overseas, even though remittances ranged between a moderately favorable 5 percent to 7 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
From the 1980s onwards, the illegal cultivation and export of marijuana added to the strengthening of the informal economy, and improved the material living of many persons, particularly in the rural areas.
The lessons from our country’s economic history point to the salience of the strategic economic quest to build a modern, competitive, many-sided, post-colonial economy.
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