UWI obtains funding for new Competitiveness Centre
Published:Sunday | October 3, 2010 | 12:00 AM
The University of the West Indies will be establishing a new Caribbean Competitiveness Centre at its St Augustine campus in Trinidad and Tobago. It will be financed by a US$750,000 grant from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the United Kingdom's Department for International Development (DFID).
IDB Caribbean Department Manager Gerard Johnson and Professor E. Nigel Harris, vice chancellor of the University of the West Indies (UWI), on Friday signed the agreement to establish the centre at a Caribbean regional forum organised by the IDB in Nassau, The Bahamas.
According to a release from the IDB, Pro Vice Chancellor of Planning and Development, Bhoendradatt Tewarie, will be the centre's chairman.
The IDB said the centre would help upgrade the technical capacity of academics and public and private-sector officials in cutting-edge approaches to competitiveness, business-climate reforms, clustering, and small and medium-size enterprises development.
"The Caribbean Competitiveness Centre will provide intellectual leadership on issues related to private-sector development and competitiveness," said Johnson, "by increasing the institutional capacity to generate and share world-class and Caribbean-specific knowledge on private-sector development and competitiveness."
Harris said the UWI was fully committed with strengthening research capabilities and training to support private-sector development and competitiveness in the region.
"The establishment of this centre will put UWI at the forefront of the debate on policies to promote private-sector development," he said.
"I am sure that the centre will establish a network of academics, policymakers, and business leaders to share their reflections and ideas on how to move the region forward," he added. He hailed the partnership as "a great vehicle to generate new ideas and policies to improve the region's competitiveness".
The UWI is the region's higher- education institution serving 15 countries in the English-speaking Caribbean, and according to the IDB, is the ideal partner for such an initiative.
The IDB said the establishment of the Caribbean Competitiveness Centre is closely related to a larger initiative, Compete Caribbean, a multimillion-dollar grant facility established by the IDB, DFID, and the Canadian International Development Agency to provide grant funding to support productive policies, business-climate reforms, clustering initiatives, and small and medium-sized enterprises within a comprehensive private-sector development framework in the Caribbean.