Skill WAVE: Workshop for Action, Vision and Entrepreneurship - Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

Over the last decade, the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECCU) has increasingly been impacted by low growth, high public sector deficits and high current account deficits. In addition, these countries have been affected by low productivity growth which has hindered their development of competitive activities. The COVID-19 pandemic has further aggravated an already difficult situation. These tourism-dependent countries have suffered immensely from a virtual shutdown of international travel; stayover arrivals to the Caribbean fell by approximately 67 per cent in 2020. There is a clear need to support economic restructuring to build overall economic resilience as well as resilience of its tourism sector if these countries are to regain lost ground in achieving key SDGs and grow out of their current indebtedness.

The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean has launched a project titled Building back better in tourism-dependent Caribbean economies post COVID-19. This project aims to identify the major impacts of the pandemic on the tourism sector and support the development of practical strategies to aid countries in their post-pandemic rebuilding efforts. In the project there will be a dedicated focus on formulating policy measures regarding building the resilience of the subregional tourism sector as well as developing productive and export capacity of new or emerging sectors capitalizing on avenues for South-South cooperation where available. Particular attention will be paid to highly vulnerable groups regarding the economic impact of COVID-19, climate change and disasters and wherever feasible, there will be a dedicated focus on the specific situations of women, children and young people, older persons, persons living with disabilities, persons living in depressed communities, migrants and refugees.

One of the two main intended outcomes of the project is the enhanced capacity of women, youth, rural dwellers and other target groups to capitalize on entrepreneurial opportunities in new capital sectors identified for economic transformation.

To this end ECLAC will be hosting a series of national workshops meant to build entrepreneurship capacity among target groups in each country. The workshops should provide capacity-building to enhance entrepreneurship and related business activities, with priority given to women. Topics covered will include but not be limited to business opportunity identification, business continuity management, financial management, supply chain management and exporting