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Newly appointed Executive Director of the Caribbean Export Development Agency, Deodat Maharaj.

Call for collective approach to marketing in region

With the unprecedented challenges facing Caribbean countries as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Executive Director of Caribbean Export Development Agency, Deodat Maharaj, is adamant that it cannot be business as usual, and that there must be a collective approach to how regional firms market and sell their products to the world.

 

Maharaj, who took over at the helm of that regional entity on February 1 this year, made the point in an interview with The Barbados Advocate, as he revealed plans to promote the region under the brand ‘Absolutely Caribbean’. Maharaj maintained that COVID-19 has underscored the importance of the Caribbean working as one and explained that promoting the Caribbean as a single brand, gives recognition to regionally made products.

 

“So whether it is a soap product from Barbados or an organic oil from another country, we’re going to do ‘Absolutely Caribbean’. We’ve actually started building our website, this will be ready maybe in two months or so... Going forward we’re going to brand everything. The brand is something that has flair, it will have flavour and it shows what we have to offer,” the Caribbean Export head stated.

 

Maharaj went on to explain that given the small size of our countries and small populations, we cannot compete with mass producers like China or India, but we can produce niche products at premium prices for niche markets. His comments came as he said if the region embraces this concept, the “economic potential is huge”.

 

“So we don’t do garments, we can’t compete with the big countries in the world in terms of mass production, but we do Caribbean fashion, fashion that’s Absolutely Caribbean... At present we tend to market as Grenada, which has 90,000 to 100,000 people; we tend to market as St. Kitts and Nevis, 60,000 people; we tend to market as Barbados, and we understand marketing of Barbados in terms of tourism, but by branding Absolutely Caribbean, what we do is bring the whole region together. We will drive down costs and then we have name recognition, because everybody knows the Caribbean. We then take that brand to premium markets, in Europe, in Canada, in the United States of America, to premium markets in South America and beyond,” the executive director stated.

 

Regional stock exchange and investment policy required

He maintained that given that regional governments do not have the fiscal space to generate the employment that is required at this time, the regional private sector must take on more of a leadership role in the post-COVID recovery and beyond. In that vein, he asserted that it is imperative that steps are taken to create an environment and infrastructure for Caribbean people to invest across the region.  Moreover, he said the Caribbean needs to have a regional investment policy and a regional stock exchange.

 

“We need to have regulations that are business friendly. So if an investor wants to come, you want to have the infrastructure to provide support for that investor to come into a country, you want to have matching possibilities, so that investor can match with local businesses. Additionally, a regional investment code is very, very vital going forward. Let’s say you have a hotel that wants to come and invest $200 million or $300 million in the Caribbean, but country X maybe might be too small individually, but if you package them, then you have scale. So a regional investment policy is vital,” Maharaj said.

 

He added, “Related to that has to do with capital. At the regional level we don’t have a regional stock exchange. If you have a regional stock exchange that means if you’re a taxi driver in Bridgetown, or a small businessperson in Speightstown, or a retiree living in St. Lucy, you can take a small amount of money and you can invest in a company and become a stakeholder”.

 

Improvement needed

Coupled with the aforementioned, the Caribbean Export head said that regional governments also have to improve the ease of doing business. Referencing the 2020 World Bank Ease of Doing Business Index, he noted that Jamaica is the highest ranking Caribbean country, followed by St. Lucia and the rest of the Caribbean are in the bottom half of the Index. He insisted that efforts must be made to improve these rankings.

 

“Mauritius is a small island developing state in the Indian Ocean, an African country, and Mauritius shares many of the characteristics of countries in the Caribbean – small [and] vulnerable. But they rank within the top 15 in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index, like Germany, Australia, Portugal and Spain. So it is not that it can’t be done, it can be done with vision and vision backed by action,” Maharaj affirmed.

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