Dr. Nigel Clarke, Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
The Caribbean region must urgently prioritise boosting growth potential through productivity enhancing reforms while simultaneously building resilience against economic shocks and natural disasters.
This imperative was highlighted by Dr. Nigel Clarke, Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), during his keynote address at the 25th William G. Demas Memorial Lecture.
Dr. Clarke cited the IMF’s downgraded global growth projections published in April 2025, which revealed reduced growth forecasts of 2.8 percent for 2025 and 3.0 percent for 2026—the lowest levels in nearly two decades, excluding the pandemic.
“Simply put, new uncertainties on top of already weak global economic prospects make for a very challenging global growth backdrop,” he said. Dr. Clarke further advised that the IMF has assessed that risks to global financial stability have increased significantly which adds to pre-existing Caribbean vulnerabilities.
Dr. Clarke presented analysis showing that Caribbean growth potential has halved in the last two decades as compared with the previous two. “This presents the Caribbean with an aggravated challenge to reverse its trend of slower growth at a time when global growth is also declining.”
Dr. Clarke noted, however, that “the (Caribbean’s) growth challenge is not a mystery.” He added that the long-term decline in Caribbean growth potential can be decomposed into its constituent factors: steep declines in productivity growth, physical and human capital, before pointing out that “the Caribbean’s productivity growth decline to almost zero is the root of the Caribbean’s growth challenge.”
He also cautioned that “there is no magic solution, there is no quick fix. Great danger exists if we believe that the growth challenge can be addressed with quick fixes.”
