Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB) Governor Timothy Antoine has highlighted challenges confronting the region, underscoring the importance of creating structures that ensure growth and development across the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECCU).
“… whether growth is something we simply measure or something our people actually feel, The Big Push demands, quite frankly, a reimagining of our development mode”, he said. “And in doing so, we must confront some hard and inescapable truths,” he said.
On Thursday, Anthoine addressed the launch of the ECCB’s strategic plan to double the region’s GDP and enhance the wealth of its citizens over the next decade.
The event was held under the theme “The Big Push: Collective Action for Shared Prosperity in the ECCU.”
Antoine recalled that three years ago he asked, “What will it take to double the size of our economies over the next decade?”
He said that back then, the question was “a vision” but “that vision becomes action”.
The ECCB governor said “our development challenge is structural, not cyclical” and noted that over 80% of what the people of the region eat is imported, leading to “high food import bills and high incidence of disease and death”.
Antoine also noted that almost 90% of the energy consumed comes from fossil fuels, resulting in “higher electricity costs, and reducing competitiveness”.
He said connectivity within the region is another challenge as it is “costly and inefficient”, hence “it’s cheaper to go to New York or Miami than it is to go to Barbados or Trinidad”.
The ECCB governor further highlighted several factors that pose challenges to the region’s growth and development.
Among them, he mentioned stagnant or declining productivity amid falling populations across the currency union and the concern of credit to the private sector remaining “too low”.
“How do you grow and double the size of an economy with a falling population? We have to arrest this issue, folks. We have to wrestle with these issues and we have to solve them,” Antoine said.
The Big Push, he said, “is not a slogan” but a “strategy for transformation, a commitment to regional coordination and execution, and a call to collective action…
“It is about diversifying these economies, resilience, competitiveness, and always shared prosperity. Above all, it is about people,” he said.
Antoine emphasised that the strategic plan is about lives and livelihoods and “its central promise is shared prosperity for the people of the ECCU.
“It is about whether a young graduate finds opportunity at home or feels compelled to pursue opportunity abroad. A farmer can produce competitively and help reduce our food import bill. Small businesses can grow and create jobs,” Antoine said.
“Taken together, these hard truths are not mere inconveniences. They are structural constraints on our growth, our resilience, and our sovereignty.
“And let me say this plainly as I could: inaction is costly. Inaction is not neutral; it compounds and accelerates decline.
“And that is why inaction is not a solution about these issues. And here at the Central Bank, we say it all the time. We have a choice every day,” he said.
Antoine said, “We can choose to either curse darkness or light a candle.
“This strategic plan lights candles on many of these issues, but we cannot do it alone. The big push is not a panacea and it is not the responsibility of the ECCB alone,” he said.
Antoine reiterated that the plan is a big and ambitious one, adding, “but we, with all of our resources and all of our energy, cannot do it by ourselves.
“After all, the ECCB itself does not produce growth. We create the conditions that make growth possible.
“We keep the ECD (Eastern Caribbean Dollar) strong. We safeguard the financial system. We build confidence,” he said.
