The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

THE CARIBBEAN Export Development Agency (CEDA) wants to bring the Caribbean Investment Forum (CIF) to The Bahamas following this year’s successful staging in Trinidad and Tobago this November.

Deodat Maharaj, the Caribbean Export Development Agency’s (CEDA) executive director, told Tribune Business his organisation’s mission is to stimulate “greater regional investment” with this year’s event focused “exclusively” on businesses rather than policymakers.

“The response in Trinidad was overwhelming. We had to stop registrations because we had over 600 people registering, and 95 percent of them were actually business people: Less talk and more business. So we created the platform for business to engage with business, and it blew our minds because the success was overwhelming,” he said.

The Caribbean Investment Forum is typically held in Miami, New York or Toronto, so this year was among the first occasions it has been held in the Caribbean. The goal is to ultimately keep it in the region for business-to-business contacts only.

Businesses use the forum to make pitches for financing and capital to a global audience of investors. Mr Maharaj said: “Of course we want to get investment here; there’s no debate about that. The bigger challenge is that an investor wants to raise the project, and that means we have to do a lot of work in developing projects.

“So the country pitches were a bit different in that we are asking investment promotion agencies to come forward with projects to present at the conference and present to potential investors.”

The focus for this year’s Caribbean Investment Forum was the areas of agriculture, e-commerce and digitisation, innovation and technology as well as the green economy, plus transport and logistics. “So the pillars of the overall Caribbean Investment Forum was to focus on sectors that will not lead to peripheral changes, but the transformation of our economies,” Mr Maharaj added.

Financial institutions including Republic Bank in Trinidad, the National Commercial Bank (NCB) from Jamaica and development banks were also present at this year’s Forum. “People ask where is the money coming from at these investment forums. What was different was, for the first time, you had people with the money talking; talking about the areas that they are investing in, the areas for which people would like projects to be proposed,” Mr Maharaj said.

The Bahamas is among the primary contenders to host next year’s Caribbean Investment Forum. “We do look forward to working with jurisdictions across the Caribbean, including The Bahamas, to ensure that this Caribbean Investment Forum and its brand stays in the Caribbean, and that countries across the region, including The Bahamas, have the opportunity to host this,” Mr Maharaj added.

“We have been talking to several countries. So, of course, we will also speak to The Bahamas because we think The Bahamas has a very good business environment, good location and the other countries as well. But we would want at least to have one of these conferences in The Bahamas because it’s a good place to do business. The Bahamas may be closer to North America, but Bahamians are Caribbean people.”