Current Projects

Project: Florida/Caribbean Symposium
Agency/Counterpart: The World Trade Center, Miami and Caribbean-Central American Action

Overview

C-TRADECOM provided assistance to the World Trade Center, Miami and Caribbean-Central American Action to host a symposium “Florida Caribbean Collaborative Development Strategies: Positioning Caribbean Businesses to Compete in an FTAA Era” at the Sherbourne Centre, Barbados on June 23-24.

Based on the position paper “From Insular to International – What Strategies”, the symposium brought together business and academic leaders and policy makers from the Caribbean and the State of Florida. It addressed strategies for maximizing the benefits of the FTAA, while recognizing the critical challenges that need to be surmounted to ensure greater harmony between the development concerns of smaller Caribbean economies and trade liberalization.

Prominent experts and business leaders from the Caribbean and Florida led sessions on the current and future outlook of the Caribbean related to best practices for small and medium-sized companies, target marketing, international joint ventures, capital markets and non-traditional investments.

Some of the topics on the agenda included Florida and the Caribbean: The Strategic Importance of the Relationship, Target Marketing – Accessing Caribbean Nationals Living Overseas, Formation of a Caribbean Stock Exchange and Promoting Non-Traditional Investment Mechanisms, and Upgrading and Benchmarking Against International Standards- Best Practices for Small and Medium-Sized Caribbean Businesses.