Critique of 'Guidelines for Economic Development: Strategy for CARICOM Countries into the 21st Century

• Author: Courtney Blackman
• Pages: 84-101

THE PRACTICE OF ECONOMIC MANAGEMENT

84

Guidelines for Economic Development summarizes the larger work,

Caribbean Development to the Year 2000: Challenges, Prospects and Policies.

When read these two documents provide a comprehensive

description of the current state of Caribbean economies, and are

required reading for students of Caribbean economics, civil

servants, businessmen and educated laymen throughout the

region. The statistical tables, charts and bibliography appended

to Caribbean Development constitute an elaborate economic database

on the region.

However, Guidelines suffers from the classical shortcomings of

consensus documents that must accommodate several conflicting

views. This accounts for the comprehensiveness of the study, but

leads to the blurring of some critical issues, and the inclusion of

others of marginal or doubtful value. For example, the Exclusive

Economic Zone takes up a great deal of space even though its

meaningful exploitation is at least a decade away. On the other

hand, important insights, such as the need for self-reliance and

the appropriate roles of government and the private sector, are

not adequately developed.

A second weakness of Guidelines is that it does not quite escape

the statist mind-set which has characterized Caribbean economic

5

CRITIQUE OF ‘GUIDELINES

FOR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT:

STRATEGY FOR

CARICOM COUNTRIES

INTO THE 21ST CENTURY’

GUIDELINES FOR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

85

policy making over the last two decades, and from which, under

the whiplash of foreign creditors and international financial

institutions, we are only now slowly emerging. Government is still

seen as the dominant agent in development operations, with the

private sector as a junior and somewhat inconvenient partner.

For example, Caribbean Development (p.115) is concerned with ‘how

not to stifle entrepreneurial development, while preventing the

uneven distribution of economic power from having adverse

effects on society at large.

Guidelines is understandably polite to the governments that

commissioned the study. The policy failures of Caribbean

governments during what I have elsewhere called ‘The Lost

Decades’, are glossed over rather lightly. The 15 years of

irresolution in the pursuit of Caribbean integration are too readily

forgiven, and the capricious observance and non-obser vance of

the CARICOM Treaty is not mentioned at all. The analysis of our

recent economic performance is muted and the

recommendations of Guidelines lack incisiveness.

In its introduction, Guidelines asserts that the challenge to the

region ‘is to conceptualise, formulate, and implement a

development strategy’, and it undertakes ‘to set out the principal

conclusions and proposals for economic strategies and policies

which have been identified as being the correct ones to guide

the deliberations of the Regional Economic Conference.’ In fact,

Guidelines, like its parent Caribbean Development, is an educational

document rather than a statement of strategic intent. It conveys

exhaustive information about the issues related to Caribbean

development and, as indicated above, reveals keen insights on

the part of the author and his advisors. However, Guidelines does

not articulate a coherent development strategy for the Caribbean;

what social scientists call a ‘paradigm’. This is its most serious

weakness.

Guidelines appears to use the term ‘strategy’ interchangeably

with ‘policy’. In fact, a strategy is a master plan from which