The John Rapley-led Caribbean Policy Research Institute (CAPRI) appears to have scored another success with its extremely well-timed Cuba conference held at the University of the West Indies on July 22 and 23rd. The title of the conference "Cuba and its neighbours : The challenges of change", is extremely well timed, whilst holding the conference in partnership with the world-famous Washington-based Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars will give its findings immediate international recognition.

Prime Minister of Jamaica Bruce Golding gave a keynote address that would be for any political leader an exceptionally thoughtful and frank analysis of Cuba's current situation.

He argued that much had changed since the 1970s, which he described as a period "that was not just a battle of ideas, but a battle for allegiance". At that time, clearly referring to Jamaica - Cuba relations, he noted that the principle of non-interference between states had been violated. The JLP had opposed this vigorously, for which he gave "no apologies".

However, the break-up of the Soviet Union meant that Jamaica no longer had a geopolitical advantage in terms of investment, as investors were only concerned if a country was a good place to do business. Golding pronounced himself satisfied, unlike the 1970s, that the conditions for the "export of the Cuban revolution" no longer existed, and that Cuba's policy had given way to one of non -interference.

Moreover, he was very impressed not just by the extent but the genuineness of Cuba's assistance to the Caribbean "without any strings attached", despite their own severe economic problems which he noted "gave them every excuse" to be more miserly in their assistance.

Commenting on US sanctions, Golding argued that even if their original intention had been "to coerce Cuba into reform and change", it was clear that after nearly 50 years that it has "got to a point that it has no use whatsoever".

The US now has trade relations with both China and Vietnam despite their still nominally communist political ideology and human rights issues, an inconsistency that makes the continued embargo "inexplicable".

Arguing that Jamaica sees its present relations with Cuba as "a window of opportunity", he noted the recent dialogue between US congressmen/senators and the Cuban leadership, and that "at least one of the two Presidential candidates has expressed a willingness to engage" in dialogue with Cuba.

He argued that his conversations with the political leadership in Cuba suggested that they realised "transformation has to come", but whilst "Cuba recognises the need for change", it is a process that needs to be encouraged by the international community in a non-intrusive way.

Golding's view of incremental change was supported by Jorge Heine of the Canadian Centre for International Governance and Innovation, who argued that the past few months have seen change in Cuba but that there was a need "to let Cuba sort out its problems" and avoid "artificial deadlines" for opening up and democratisation.

Both Dr Heine and energy consultant Zia Mian believed that the discovery of billions of barrels of oil off Cuba's coast meant that the oil-hungry United States would strengthen relations with Cuba sooner rather than later.

One of the most interesting presentations was by Rafael Romeu, an economist at the International Monetary Fund, on what impact the lifting of the embargo would have on Caribbean tourism. Stressing that the views were his own and not those of his Washington-based employer, Romeu gave a summary of his recently published IMF working paper entitled "Vacation over : Implications for the Caribbean of Opening US - Cuba Tourism."
His paper used the "gravity model" of foreign trade, based on the simple idea that trade between countries is positively related to their size, but negatively related to distance, a good proxy for trade costs generally. Big countries, such as the U S and China, trade with each other despite distance, whilst small countries trade with big countries when they are close eg the US and Caribbean.

According to Romeu, the model is highly successful in explaining regional tourism, ie why 85% of visitors to the Caribbean come from the US as opposed to other countries' tourists visiting the Caribbean. The main outliers are Puerto Rico and Cuba, who get respectively far more and far less US tourists than might be expected from the model.

According to the model, the US/Cuba travel restrictions appear to have the equivalent impact of Cuba being 7,000 nautical miles from the United States. The consequence of this is that less than one per cent of US travellers to the Caribbean visit Cuba, compared with the 34 per cent of Canadian visitors to the Caribbean travelling to Cuba. The restrictions mean that the rest of the Caribbean enjoys what is a substantial degree of effective trade protection.

Romeu's model posits that a lifting of the embargo will sharply increase the number of tourists visiting Cuba to 3.5 million, with a huge increase in richer American tourists (up to three million from the current roughly 50,000 a year), "outbidding" other countries' tourists, some of whom will no longer go to Cuba.
Conversely, the model projects that Cayman, Bahamas, the US Virgin Islands and most importantly Jamaica currently have "way too many Americans", and are therefore highly vulnerable to this potential change.

Whilst Cuba's current hotel inventory of 50,000 rooms is insufficient to meet this projected demand, which as Mr. Romeu says "if there are no hotel rooms that buys you time", nevertheless neighbouring countries should get prepared for what is to come.

This message does not appear to be lost on Minister of Tourism Ed Bartlett, who from his speech the night before, appears to be focusing his future marketing efforts away from the traditional sea, sun and sand (which the Cuba product is currently reliant on) into health tourism, education-tourism, eco- tourism and faith-based tourism among other initiatives.

Finally, Jamaica's Commissioner of Police Major Hardley Lewin closed the conference by noting that Cuba is faced by some of the same threats as other countries in the region e.g. drug trafficking, which presents an opportunity for regional dialogue to tackle the region's shared problems.

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