Business View Caribbean - April 2015 93
press, because they face the pressure of high electric-
ity rates and the electricity grid, and they’ve had a lot
of adjustments to make, particularly those focused on
the domestic market. Tourism is growing and tourism
employment is expanding. So, yes, it’s still an uneven
process. The process of outsourcing employment is
also expanding.
What we want is to be at a faster rate and we want
income derived at a faster rate, yes. But, I think if you
look at the world economy as a whole, what we are
seeing is still a very uneven growth dynamic in the
world economy. Europe is flat, the United States is re-
bounding, but is only now rebounding with that still
quite stagnant there, so overall, given where we are
coming from, I think we are basically seeing some sat-
isfaction. Would we want more? Yes, we want more,
always want more, but we have to build upon it. I don’t
think you’re going to turn around from 40 years of low
growth rates averaging below 5 percent and the course
of reform that is underway now for one year and a half,
that you’re going to move from negative to 3, 4 percent
in the course of one year. That defies the laws of grav-
ity and of economics.
BUSINESS VIEW: A local article that you were quoted
in indicated that one of the businesses, Red Stripe,
is going to invest more in locally sourced materials.
How important are things like that to both making
sure progress is maintained and inspiring confi-
dence?
PHILLIPS:
I think those things are very important. We
currently import about a billion dollars, U.S., annually
of foodstuffs, and much of this represents inputs into
the production process sourced from overseas. One
of the things that we have been seeing is a greater
impulse on the part of local companies, who produce
things like animal feed, producing things like beer, to
engage in productive activities, to source those sup-
plies domestically. So, we’re seeing, for example, ani-
mal feed producers trying to replace their imported
foodstuffs with locally grown sorghum, which they are
growing and achieving yields similar to the yields in the
U.S., in the Midwest. We are also seeing, as in the case
of Red Stripe, where they are applying modern scientif-
ic agronomic techniques to the production of cassava
to replace barley and they have been quadrupling or
more the yields of cassava in Jamaica and they are,
in fact, in the process of expanding their production,
reaching to get up to 2,500 acres.
We have other companies looking to replace some of
their imported wheat flour in the production of baked
goods, for example, with cassava flour produced local-
ly. So, all of these really represent very important de-
velopment. At the same time, in traditional industries
like sugar cane, we are seeing an effort to modernize
production and in fact, to achieve levels of global com-
petitiveness. There’s a hundred million dollar plus,
and I’m talking U.S. dollars, modernization of sugar
cane factories taking place, over 2 million factories,
which will replace old plants and again, to increase
competitiveness. All of this flows from the reforms that
have been undertaken, flows from the adjustments
and prices resulting from the currency depreciations.
Those reforms are not complete, but we can take com-
fort from the fact that we are seeing these changes in
the patents and major enterprises.
BUSINESS VIEW: One of the things our series want-
ed to touch on was are there certain companies that
have led the turnaround, whose best practices have
pulled in the right direction as far as economic prog-
ress goes? You mentioned Red Stripe, are there any
others that have been particular examples of real
approaches that are helping out?
PHILLIPS:
Well, I would look at the Pan Caribbean
Sugar doing some of the work that I mentioned in the
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