September 2015 Issue Business View Caribbean

Business View Caribbean - September 2015 13 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