CHALLENGES EXIST, BUT there are also opportunities for Barbados and other countries in the region to enhance relations with the European Union.
That’s the finding of a new publication released by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean and the EU Latin America and the Caribbean Foundation.
It said both the region and Europe were a “complex international scenario”. It was a situation “characterised by a distinct recessionary bias, a rise in global inequality and the intensification of the environmental crisis, the acceleration of the technological revolution, the emergence of new actors in the international economic system, and the negotiation of mega-agreements”.
The publication gave an overview of the economic, social and environmental realities of both blocs, placing emphasis on the need to move towards a more sustainable and egalitarian development pattern, as well as towards an investment model that favours innovation and structural change and allows for economic growth and carbon emissions to be decoupled.
The study found that “it is a propitious time for the European Union and Latin America and the Caribbean to generate an environmental big push that enables a move towards new investment patterns that favour innovation and structural change, and allow for economic growth and carbon emissions to be decoupled”.
In that way, countries would make progress towards a new development paradigm that is more sustainable and egalitarian.
According to the publication, the changes in the international context are reflected, foremost, in the slower pace of economic growth. For example, for the first time in a decade, Latin American and Caribbean countries are growing at lower rates than nations in the European Union: in 2016 the region’s Gross Domestic Product is expected to fall 0.9 per cent, while that of the European Union is seen as rising by 1.8 per cent, which reduces the chances of narrowing the income gaps per inhabitant with countries of that region. (SC/PR)