A year in, US$40m Compete Caribbean funds ready for launch
Published:Wednesday | October 5, 2011 | 12:00 AM
The Inter-American Development Bank and two donor partners will officially launch their joint US$40 million project designed to help regional companies compete more effectively for global business.
The other sponsors of the programme called 'Compete Caribbean' that has been up and running for a year are Canadian International Development Agency, and the United Kingdom Department for International Development.
At US$40 million, the size of the programme is more than the US$32 million of grant funds that was disclosed by Caribbean Export at a business support organisation forum also held in Kingston back in April.
The agencies have pulled together a one-day conference set for October 11 in Kingston to assess the region's comparative advantage, issues of productivity, how to drive exports, as well as employment and growth, and launch the competitiveness project.
Compete Caribbean said it would share details of its Enterprise Innovation Challenge Fund and Support to Clustering Initiative at the conference, as well as convene a roundtable of investors to discuss investment opportunities in the region.
"Improving competitiveness is the key to success for every country in the globalised economy of the 21st century," said Compete Caribbean Executive Director José Jorge Saavedra in a statement announcing the conference. "It is also the predominant issue that will determine what kind of economic future lies ahead for the Caribbean," he said.
Compete Caribbean is a five-year programme spanning 15 regional countries, including Jamaica. It is expected to wind down by 2015.
Diego Morris, project officer at the IDB Barbados office, said back in April that Compete Caribbean would address, among other issues, productivity improvements and the positioning of firms to access markets inside and beyond their country borders.