Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley has challenged young economists and academics to assist government in its fight to change the architecture which governs how the world deals with finance and development for the region.

She made the call for action on Thursday night as she delivered the feature address at the launch of Volumes I and II of Caribbean, Trade, Integration – Selected Papers of the late Sir Alister McIntyre at the Errol Barrow Centre for Creative Imagination on Thursday.

The Prime Minister reasoned that some headway had been made, regarding access to concessional development financing on the basis of gross domestic product, due to the climate crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, after more than three decades of battling for an ease for the region.

Speaking directly to Dr. Simon Naitram, Lecturer in Economics at the University of the West Indies, Ms. Mottley proffered: “this university of which you have been a proud member has raised you up, now, along with others like you to take the battle to the world and to recognise that we have trained you to be as good or better than, because you do so with context and experience and perspective and we are facing a world now that is sorely lacking in global moral, strategic leadership.” 

She continued: “Let that leadership come from us at all levels and in all spheres. And let us build on the excellent work that is so immortalised in these two volumes of a gentleman like Sir Alister McIntyre and many others who, by the sweat of their brow, have literally laid the way for the rest of us now to engage and to take that baton for this leg of the relay.” 

Ms. Mottley expressed the hope that the work, of two volumes of almost 600 pages of rich Caribbean thought and writing will help us in this effort not to “shy away from our role in the shaping of global financial institutions or in regional development thought, but to propel us at a pace that will allow us to see greater progress than they would have seen without the benefit of this work”. 

Young Economists Encouraged To Help Change Finance Architecture