By AVA TURNQUEST

Tribune Staff Reporter

aturnquest@tribunemedia.net

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad - Regional economist Carl Howell urged labour markets in the Caribbean to address competitiveness and ease of doing business in a bid to push back against saturation from China.

Mr Howell, an economist with the Caribbean Development Bank, said it is difficult for local markets to compete against China’s resources, which allows for a total package of financing and labour.

He added that it was important for countries to move quickly to implement a strategy as it was the only path to sustained growth levels.

Mr Howell said: “The strategy that the regional industry would have to develop is to see how best they can decrease the operational costs that they have, so that they can have at least some sort of a chance at competing against China’s resources. It’s not easy because what China is bringing to the table would be a package comprised of both finances and labour.

“How do you sort of decouple that? So there is a greater role for the labour markets in the Caribbean to augment finances or financial resources coming from China. It’s a real difficult dynamic,” he said.

The $3.5bn Baha Mar resort is primarily financed by the Export-Import Bank of China while China State Construction Engineering Corp is the general contractor for the project. Mr Howell spoke to The Tribune on the sidelines of CIBC FirstCaribbean’s regional infrastructure conference under the theme “Driving Caribbean Infrastructure Forward” last week.

At the conference, Mr Howell moderated a session on accounting and fiscal challenges related to public-private partnership.

On that topic Mr Howell said: “Given that most of the countries in the Caribbean are still going south of three per cent, if we look at the ease of doing business in the region they are not stellar. The only way that the region could have sustained growth levels is if they do something very quickly about the cost of doing business and the level of competitiveness generally.”