UWI hosts webinar on debt, tourism, well-being after pandemic

The pandemic has affected debt dynamics, tourism and socio-economic well-being in individual countries.

The department of economics at UWI St Augustine hosted a webinar on March 31 on Debt, Tourism and Well-being. Panellists included Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) statistician Dindial Ramrattan, Inter-American Development Bank economic adviser Henry Mooney and co-ordinator of the Statistics and Social Development Unit, Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) Abdullahi Abdulkadri. The webinar was moderated by Regan Deonanan of UWI’s economics department.

Ramrattan said, “Prior to the pandemic regional economies were trending towards debt sustainability. In 2020, the debt-to-gross-domestic-product (GDP) ratio increased due to both increases in debt and a decline in GDP. In 2021, expenditure containment and the recovery of growth has led to a decrease in the ratio.”He said, the covid19-response policy agenda for Caribbean countries is based on protection of livelihoods and social cohesion, recovery based on supporting existing export industries and repositioning economies to achieve greater resilience.

“The CDB is assisting by building social, environmental, production, financial and institutional resilience.”

Abdulkadri said, “Pre-existing social vulnerabilities included health, poverty, education, labour markets, and violence.

“The path to a resilient recovery is to focus on poverty eradication through social protection; health and wellbeing of the population; inclusive and accessible quality education; and gender equality and empowerment.

“Shock provides an opportunity for building more resilient economies.”

On diversification, Mooney said, “A diversified economy means many sources of income. The trouble is, it is not always an easy thing to do. The crisis is presenting new opportunities for example the virtual outsourcing by many international companies.”

Abdulkadri said, “Diversification away from tourism is always a good thing. What we’ve learned from covid19 is there are high returns from competency. Companies are seeing a gain in productivity from implementing remote working.”

Ramrattan said, “The pandemic highlighted inefficiencies. A holistic review of the region needs to be done.“We need to maintain a focus on statistics and reduce our dependence on imports.”

Abdulkadri said, “Economic and financial data is not the problem but social data, for example, poverty, has a gap.

“Covid19 highlighted the need for food security and inter-regional transport.”