Resilient and affordable housing in the Caribbean: Policy recommendations towards a transformative, green and inclusive recovery strategy. Policy Brief

The Caribbean faces multidimensional vulnerabilities driven by climate change and aggravated by Small Island Developing States’ natural and economic characteristics (SIDS). A critical natural feature of SIDS is the extreme vulnerability to climate-change-induced events. Economically, the Caribbean has followed the global trend of seeing its urban areas swell during the last decades. Moreover, the region’s coastal areas expose human settlements, infrastructure, and businesses to external shocks, such as climate change-induced extreme weather events. In addition, the 2019 novel coronavirus disea…

The Hummingbird Vol. 9 No. 9

The Hummingbird Vol. 9 No. 8

The Hummingbird Vol. 9 No. 7

Post-COVID-19 Economic Aspects of Digital Transformation

Preliminary overview of the economies of the Caribbean 2020–2021

This overview examines the economic performance of economies of the Caribbean in 2020 and comprises four chapters. The first chapter provides a comparative analysis across Caribbean economies of the main macroeconomic variables, namely GDP growth, monetary indicators, as well as fiscal and external accounts. The second chapter looks at areas of focus in the Caribbean. The third chapter concludes, while the annex includes individual country briefs that give an overview of the economic situation for the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Guyana, Jamaica, Suriname and a subregional assessment of the coun…

The Hummingbird Vol. 9 No. 3

The Caribbean is Making Strides on the SDGS

Economic Survey of the Caribbean 2021

This survey examines the economic performance of economies of the Caribbean in 2020 and the first few months of 2021 and comprises five chapters. The first chapter gives an overview of global, regional and subregional economic performance in the Caribbean. The second provides an analysis of the subregion’s fiscal performance and debt burden. The third looks at monetary policy and their impacts. The fourth is focused on the external sector, while the fifth concludes.…

Proposal to establish a Caribbean Resilience Fund: A segregated portfolio trust fund

Caribbean economies have been grappling with high debt, low growth and structural challenges which have been exacerbated since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. There is, therefore, an urgent need to reduce debt and promote resilience building for these economies. The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has proposed the establishment of the Caribbean Resilience Fund (CRF) as a mechanism to contribute to the achievement of these critical development goals. The CRF is a special purpose financing vehicle intended to leverage long-term low-cost development financing f…

The Hummingbird Vol. 9 No. 2

The Hummingbird Vol. 9 No. 1

Essential elements of the ECLAC Caribbean Resilience Fund : a segregated portfolio trust fund. Policy Brief

Declining economic growth and competitiveness, the impact of the 2007–2009 global financial crisis, and the challenge of climate change and extreme weather events have hindered the sustainable development of Caribbean economies, the generation of sustained welfare gains and the achievement of key Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the subregion’s vulnerability to the vagaries of global aggregate demand and commodity prices, which have largely driven the subregion’s debt upwards and dampened economic growth before its onset, compromising its ec…

Conceptualizing a circular economy in the Caribbean: perspectives and possibilities. Policy Brief

Although the notion of a circular economy (CE) has been conceived and debated for more than half a century (Henrysson and Nuur, 2021), it has gained considerable popularity in the lexicon of economists, ecologists and other development thinkers over the past two decades. The increasing evidence of the existential threat of human-induced climate change and the related imperatives of decarbonizing the global economy, have led to greater focus on strategies for a more sustainable use of the natural and environmental resource base.…

The Hummingbird Vol. 8 No. 12

The Hummingbird Vol. 8 No. 11

The Hummingbird Vol. 8 No. 10

The Hummingbird Vol. 8 No. 9

Strategies for Post COVID-19 Recovery in the Caribbean

The Hummingbird Vol. 8 No. 8