Monday, November 30 – Premier Honourable Ralph T. O’Neal, OBE is slated to speak at this week’s 33rd Annual Miami Conference on the Caribbean and Central America.
Premier O’Neal has been invited to speak at a town hall event, scheduled for Wednesday morning on the topic Attracting Foreign Investment to the Region.
According to the invitation letter sent to the Premier by the Caribbean-Central America Action (CCAA), he is “specifically being invited to address the policies and strategies adopted by the Virgin Islands to increase the Territory’s competitiveness and lessons learned from these actions.”
The letter further states that, “This session is designed to examine the factors that encourage private sector investment and how local and regional policies can help increase Foreign Direct Investment in the region.”
Prior to his departure, Premier O’Neal told the Department of Information and Public Relations, “To attract investors, both local and foreign, we must produce the climate where you are going to give incentives, but you are going to give incentives as a quid pro quo. When you give incentive you expect your people to get employment; you expect your local products to be sold and you want to make sure that your culture is maintained and your laws and your customs are upheld by those who come in,” Honourable O’Neal stated.
He added, “Creating the climate also addresses the question of how people are treated in the various Government agencies.”
The Premier noted too that mutual respect and efficient services are essential elements in creating the right investment climate. “You are expecting them to respect you, but you must also respect them and there must be a willingness to help people when they embark on these ventures. The whole country, the civil service, the various merchants, stores, offices, there must be a willingness to deal with people and help people in a timely and friendly manner.”
In its agenda for the meeting, the CCAA acknowledges that “Foreign Investment has become a major source of economic growth in the Caribbean and Central America.” Among some of the questions to be addressed during the town hall event on this subject are “How much do regional arrangements versus national policies affect the decisions made by foreign investors? What is driving intra-regional investment? Is there need for a regional investment policy that would level the playing field for all of the countries; or will the national enabling environment always trump regional policy?”
Delegates at the November 30 to December 2 Miami conference will discuss a range of other issues including Financial Service: Strengthening Our Emerging Markets; Small and Medium Enterprises: The Survival and Success of SMEs in a Global Market; and Crime, Drugs and Development: Containing Surging Violent Crime and Illegal Trafficking in the Caribbean Basin.
Other regional leaders scheduled to speak at the three-day Miami meeting are President René Preval of Haiti, Jamaica’s Prime Minister Honourable Bruce Golding and Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Dr. Ralph Gonsalves.
The Caribbean-Central America Action is a Washington, D.C. based non-profit, non-governmental organisation, engaged in the promotion of private sector led economic development in the Caribbean by fostering dialogue aimed at improving policy and regulatory environments.
British Virgin Islands News