What We Do Best

An uncle of mine ounce told me about a time, when the community undertook a, “coup de main”. They hacked and slashed their way through the rain-forest to the Patience River’s source. This was done in other to lay the pipes that would bring water to houses, from Micoud to Praslin. Some of us may also remember how in an instant a flash storm brought tree trunks the size of cars, down the same Patience River. Consider how, change is constantly happening, sometimes like flash storms it happens unexpectedly and at times we are able to anticipate them. St Lucia must place itself at the cutting edge of innovation and therefore invest in research and development.Such measures will help better adjust to the constant economical changes.

One might ask what type of research initiatives should we invest in, when we do not have that much capital to spend in the first place. Investment in Research and Development Initiatives compliments the banking sectors perfectly. It is a win, win situation that provides the government with a chance to invest in its people and the country’s infrastructure and also provide Banking clients the opportunity to make greater returns on their investment, rather than if they had simply placed their monies in a savings account.

We can undertake research into, Malaria, Dengue, and Sickle Cell Anemia. We are already quite involved in food services, we should extend our commitment by investing into food research. For example a traditional food such as arrowroot, the plant which we call “Toloman”, has been proven to be a versatile and effective starch product. The starch said to be superior to thann that from other plant sources.

Another idea would be to,completely making St Lucia’s electricity grid run on clean fuels such, solar, wind and or wave action, thereby directly investing into green technology, and future innovations simultaneously. And one final example,the beauty and fashion industries utilize extracts from plants such as the hibiscus, aloe Vera and cocoa,the use tropical flavors such as passion fruit and tangerine,here is an opportunity for investment.

We have year round summers, arguably with our exposure, we should be dictating summer fashion. In these areas where we have an advantage we should be pushing the envelope and reach for the forefront of innovation and technology. The only way however to achieve this is to invest in Research and Development.

This quote was taken from the Star Newspaper of St Lucia “Those countries that do very well spend at least three percent or more of GDP on R&D (research and development)”. It was attributed to Mr Peter Adrien. The article was in reference to Sir Arthur Lewis’s theory on Economic development. Here is another statement gleaned from an online article of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB America Magazine) “South Korea invests more in research and development (R&D) than all Latin American nations combined”. South Korea like Taiwan is one of the few countries that has been able to foster economic success sine the end of world war two. These observations reinforce the importance of investing in Research and Development.

In the not so distant past, St Lucia could have easily been derogatorily referred to as a banana republic. At present a major part of our economy is dependent on tourism. It is also a fact that we are vulnerable to changes in the global economy. The recent global recession has once again proven that. In order to cope with such unavoidable problems, policy makers must be prudent, in that they must have responsive, yet innovative approaches to development. One proven approach has been investments in Research and Development. We are easily susceptible to the adverse effects of change and therefore we must make the fullest use of our economical comparative advantages.