Caribbean & Central America - February 2022

*** JAMAICA MURDERS UP 10%. According to the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF), there were 1,463 murders in Jamaica in 2021, up 10% on the 2020 figure. However, according to the JCF, all other major crimes were down in 2021. Shootings were down 2%; there were 25% less reported rape cases; and robberies were down 24%.

Jamaica’s outgoing Chief of the Defence Staff, Lieutenant General Rocky Meade, said on 16 January: “We consistently have murders in the mid-to-high forties per 100,000. That’s not normal whatever measure we want to use. Whether we want to use the measure of the Latin American and Caribbean region which is the highest in the world, averaging about 16 per 100,000, or whether we’re ambitious enough to use the world norm which is about six to seven per 100,000, or even if we want to set a higher norm than the highest region in the world, over 40 per 100,000 is not normal.”

Meade made his remarks during a media presentation announcing the creation of a seventh Zone of Special Operations (Zoso) where security forces are given temporary additional powers of search, arrest, and detention.

*** ARCO NORTE DELAY. On 21 January, Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro had to cut short a visit to Suriname and Guyana before he reached Guyana due to the death of his mother. On 20 January, while in Suriname, Bolsonaro held a trilateral meeting with Suriname’s President Chanrikapersad Santokhi and Guyana’s President Irfaan Ali to discuss energy cooperation, including hopes for Brazil’s state-owned oil company Petrobras to participate in Suriname’s oil and gas sector. Discussions on the Arco Norte project, however, could not be completed.

Among the items on the agenda were a 1,500km road from Brazil’s Northern Roraima state to a new deepwater port in Guyana and a new bridge to link Guyana and Suriname. Also on the agenda were electric transmission and fibre optic links. The new infrastructure is intended to involve US$800m in projects, partly funded through private investment. The new deepwater port in Guyana is a US$200m project. Ahead of the meeting, Guyana’s Foreign Secretary Robert Persaud said: “The deepwater harbour is a major part of our transformation agenda, and we want Brazil to be part of it. Guyana offers the shortest and quickest access to the Atlantic for significant parts of northern Brazil.”

The Arco Norte energy links are intended to include a 3,000 megawatt power interconnection linking Guyana, French Guiana, Suriname, and Brazil.
A new gas pipeline will also be central to Arco Norte and is intended to be the catalyst for several new industrial and petrochemical projects, including a gas-fired aluminium smelter to process Guyana’s bauxite ore.

Ahead of the 20 January meeting, Suriname’s President Santokhi said: “The joint operation on gas exploitation will generate cheap energy and will eventually be exporting gas to Brazil.” Guyana’s President Ali said the plan was to “leverage our energy resources for energy security and to potentiate growth and development opportunities in the northern flank of South America”.

*** BELIZE OPPOSITION LEADER STEPS DOWN. The leader of Belize’s main opposition United Democratic Party (UDP), Patrick Faber, resigned with effect from 31 January following a complaint by his fiancé, Dr Shanika Arnold, to the Domestic Violence Unit. According to the police, the complaint was “one of a domestic nature where she is alleging that Mr Faber has caused damage to her laptop and had also assaulted her as she was about to leave their home…” Later, Arnold took to social media to say she had formally withdrawn the complaint, which had been the result of a misunderstanding, but by then the damage had been done.

*** BAHAMAS TARGETING FISCAL DEFICIT. The Bahamas, in its recently published Mid-Term Debt Management Strategy report, has set out an aggressive plan to attack the fiscal deficit. The report says: “As set out in the 2021 FSR [Fiscal Strategy Report], the government is targeting an overall fiscal deficit of US$415.2m or 3.3% of GDP for FY2022/23, improving to US$263.7m in FY2023/24 and achieving near balance in FY2024/25, with the overall deficit narrowing to US$67.9m or 0.5 percent of GDP.” The Bahamian dollar is pegged 1-for-1 with the US dollar. However, the report recognises the high risk that external shocks could knock the plan off course, including natural disasters, a slowdown in global economic growth, a setback in tourism performance, and failure to implement fiscal and economic policy reforms. The government is projecting GDP growth this fiscal year of 6.9%, falling to 5.8% in FY2022/23 and further to 2.6% in FY2024/25.

*** BARBADOS LOOKING FOR REBOUND. According to the Central Bank of Barbados, the economy grew by just 1.4% in 2021. Speaking on 26 January bank governor Cleviston Haynes said that “the continued depressing effect of Covid-19 on the tourism sector and on private sector investment tempered the extent of the recovery”. The overall decline in tourism arrivals for 2021 was 26%, and total arrivals were only 20% of 2019 levels.

There was a late improvement in tourism, and in the final quarter of 2021, tourist arrivals reached 47% of the corresponding pre-pandemic level of 2019. However, on 1 February the chief executive of the Barbados Hotel and Tourism Association (BHTA), Rudy Grant, warned that a full recovery in tourism “may still be two or three years away”. He added that “the projection is for a reasonably well-performing winter with occupancies for the months of January, February, March, and April 2022 projected at 66%, 62%, 65%, and 45% respectively.” With regard to debt, at end-2021 the public debt ratio was equivalent to 136.3% of GDP, just 0.3 percentage points lower than at the end of 2020.

*** CDB PROJECTS 9.1% GROWTH FOR REGION. On 1 February, the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) projected growth of 9.1% in 2022 for its 19 Borrowing Member Countries (BMC). However, this figure is greatly boosted by projected growth of 47.5% for Guyana. The average growth rate for commodity-exporting members (Guyana, Suriname, and Trinidad & Tobago) will be 17.5%, that for service-exporting countries a much more modest 4.8%.

In 2021, the CDB estimates that BMC economies grew by 3%, with the commodity-exporting economies growing by 2.7% and the service-exporting economies growing by 3.2%. According to the CDB, the growth in service-exporting economies “reflected an almost 10% increase in tourist arrivals between January and September 2021 relative to the same period in 2020”. However, it added that “despite the significant resurgence in regional tourism, arrival numbers for the January to September period were still 65% below those of the same period in 2019”. Among the commodity-exporting countries, the average growth rate of 2.7% was driven by Guyana’s advance of 19.9%. Both Suriname and Trinidad & Tobago suffered contractions.

The CDB’s 19 BMCs and their projected growth rates for 2022 are: Anguilla (7.1%), Antigua & Barbuda (5.0%), Barbados (7.6%), Belize (6.5%), British Virgin Islands (4.0%), Cayman Islands (5.0%), Dominica (3.8%), Grenada (4.5%), Guyana (47.5%), Haiti (0.3%), Jamaica (4.3%), Montserrat (4.5%), St Kitts & Nevis (6.4%), St Lucia (8.1%), St Vincent & the Grenadines (4.0%), Suriname (1.8%), The Bahamas (6.3%), Trinidad & Tobago (5.4%), and the Turks & Caicos Islands (4.8%).