The slow recovery of the Caribbean economies is mainly due to the challenges being faced by the regions main export markets – the U.S and Europe. The conventional wisdom is that over the medium term, growth in these traditional markets would continue to lag behind the more dynamic emerging market economies – China, India and Brazil.
According to this thesis a greater diversification of regional exports of goods and services towards these new growth poles would make regional economies less vulnerable to the kinds of shocks experienced in the past few years. This, combined with the establishment of greater regional linkages would seem to be a desirable medium-term economic strategy for our regional economies.