In fulfilling its mandate of promoting development in Jamaica and the rest of the Caribbean, the Caribbean Policy Research Institute (CaPRI), has appointed Avinash Persaud, Professor Emeritus of Gresham College, London and Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Financial Analysis and Policy, Cambridge University, as a CaPRI Senior Fellow. Persaud who is the current chairman of Intelligence Capital Limited, a financial advisory boutique headquartered in London, will also head the CaPRI Barbados office which will be officially opened in 2010.
“The appointment of Professor Persaud is a real coup for the Institute. His hands on, in the field experience and theoretic expertise, along with his desire for Caribbean development makes him a perfect fit for CaPRI”, said CaPRI President, Dr. John Rapley.
As Rapley indicates, Persaud who for 10 years was ranked in the top three (3) of currency analysts in global investor survey, and whose CV boast numerous academic and accomplishments, represents the ideal mix of the practical and the theoretic, as Jamaica and the region seeks workable and sustainable development policies.
As CaPRI’s track record of research, publications, seminars and public education campaigns via both electronic and print media and public forums have shown, assisting policy makers as they seek to pave a path of economic development for Jamaica and the region is our primary objective. To this end CaPRI, the first public policy think tank of its kind in the Caribbean, has always sought to engage the best minds and expertise in our research, as we offer a forum for evidence-based dialogue between government and civil society: evidence-based dialogue geared toward opening up the policy decision and policy making process to the citizenry.
Incidentally, Persaud who is also a Member of the UN Commission of Experts on International Financial Reform, and co-Chair of the OECD Emerging Market Network won the Jacques de Larosiere Award in Global Finance in 2000.
CaPRI welcomes Persaud, Governor and former Member of Council of the London School of Economics and Member of the Council of the Royal Economic Society to its team, as it seeks to continue enabling the change towards more public involvement in policy choices and implementation.
Barbados
A new think tank has been established in the Eastern Caribbean, led by internationally-renowned economist Avinash Persaud. It's called the Caribbean Policy Research Institute - or CAPRI - whose newly established Barbados office comes less than three years after a similar office in Jamaica. Independently funded, they say their mission is to inform public debate with good policy options.
David Ellis reports
A rising regional policy research organisation has thrown open its doors in Barbados in the midst of concerns that Barbados and its neighbours are at a developmental cross road. Caribbean Policy Research Institute (CaPRI), which was started less than three years ago in Kingston, Jamaica, is a public policy think tank seeking to change the way policy and decision making are currently done in the region. Officially opened last evening, it is now operating in Barbados from an office at The Annex, Herbert House, Fontabelle, St. Michael.
Speaking at the unveiling, CaPRI Senior Fellow Professor Avinash Persaud said the rut Jamaica had found itself in, most recently typified by violent confrontations between law enforcers and civilian gunmen, was something all countries in the region should be concerned about.
The economist and financial analyst said Barbados and others should not be comforted by the fact that their societies were seemingly less dysfunctional since what happened in Kingston should concern all Caribbean people and governments.
But beyond on that, he noted, societal problems were not unique to Jamaica and countries like Barbados also had other developmental, social and economic issues that needed attention.
He expected CaPRI to play a significant role in shaping the discussions and resulting policy decisions of regional Governments as they sought to advance their countries. And he promised the organisation would do so without fear since it would not only benefit from independent thought but independent funding, at least independent of government.
“It’s true to say that choices are made, things don’t happen entirely by accident. We can learn many things from Jamaica, we can learn many good things from Jamaica and we can learn some things that we must try to avoid,” Persaud told an audience including a number of entrepreneurs and thinkers in their own right.
“We can learn that there is no excusing crime because it happens to others, there is no tolerating of injustice because it happens to others, there is no complacency that it doesn’t matter that government’s inefficient because I know someone who can get me that licence, get me that form, I don’t need to stand up in the queues. It is that kind of complacency that leads to trouble and one of the things we can learn too is that growth is not a luxury it is a necessity.”
He also noted that violence in Jamaica had not existed in a vacuum, since decades of effectively zero growth there had “gone a long way to contributing to the ills and woes and difficulties and deep challenges that Jamaica now faces”.
The CaPRI spokesman said a primary solution to the challenges confronting Barbados and others was growth, a necessity to meeting continuing challenges.
Persaud also said the necessary change needed to start within and that CaPRI had an important role to play in this regard.
“The Caribbean must take responsibility; change starts with us not without and that is a key emblem, a key task, a key objective that CaPRI sets out for itself,” he stated.
Persaud thanked bodies like the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and Britain Department For International Development (DFID) for their financial support to CaPRI since its inception and vowed its voice would remain free and frank.
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