Abstract
In the late 1990s, the economies of the Caribbean are confronted with the challenge of undertaking structural adjustment while being constrained by the use of resources for servicing debts and fighting drugs. On one hand, because of recent developments in the international economic environment, the countries in the region must be preoccupied with the imperatives of structural adjustment to pursue economic development. On the other hand, the persistence of the debt burden coupled with the corrosive effects of the international drug trade divert resources and attention from important development priorities. Thus, there is a vicious circle. Under these circumstances, the best defense against the penetration of drugs is economic development. However, such development is retarded by the debt burden, especially in Jamaica and Guyana.
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Notes
Richard Bernal, ‘Strategic Global Repositioning and Future Economic Development in Jamaica’, The North-South Agenda Papers, No. 18 (May 1996) ( Miami, FL: North-South Center Press, University of Miami).
Richard Bernal and Pamela Coke Hamilton, ‘Region Seeks to Redress Apparel Issue’, Hemisfile, Vol. 8. No.2 (March/April, 1997), p.3.
David Hallan and Professor the Lord Peston, ‘The Political Economy of Europe’s Banana Trade.’ The University of Reading, Department of Agricultural and Food Economics, Occasional Paper No. 5 (January 1997), pp. 1–4, and
Keith Nurse and Wayne Sandiford, ‘Windward Island Bananas: Challenges and Options Under the Single European Market’, (Kingston, Jamaica: Frederich Ebert Stiftung, 1995 ), pp. 2–5.
Caribbean Basin Countries eligible for this program were those who signed a Tax Information Exchange Agreement (TIEA) with the United States. These countries were as follows: Barbados, Costa Rica, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guyana, Honduras, Jamaica, St Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago. For a more complete discussion of the phasing of this program, see Richard Bernal and Stephen Lamar, ‘Caribbean Basin Economic Development and the Section 936 Tax Credit.’ The North-South Agenda Papers, No. 22 ( Miami, FL: The North-South Center, University of Miami, December 1996 ).
For a discussion of WB structural adjustment programs, see Winsome J. Leslie, The WB and Structural Transformation in Developing Countries: The Case of Zaire (Boulder, CO.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1987 ).
Carol Graham, Safety Nets, Politics and the Poor: Transitions to a Market Economy. ( Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1994 ), p. 13.
Yukon Huang and Peter Nicholas, ‘The Social Costs of Adjustment’, Finance and Development, June 1987, p. 22.
See Tony Killick, Tony Addison and Lionel Demery, ‘Poverty, Adjustment and the IMF’, in Khadija Haq and Uner Kirdar (eds), Human Development, Adjustment and Growth ( Islamabad, Pakistan: North-South Roundtable, 1987 ), pp. 117–18.
Patricia Anderson and Michael Witter, ‘Crisis, Adjustment and Social Change’, in Elsie Le Franc, (ed.), Consequences of Structural Adjustment: A Review of the Jamaica Experience ( Kingston, Jamaica: Canoe Press, University of the West Indies, 1994 ), pp. 21–2.
Jere R. Behrman and Anil B. Deolalikar, ‘The Poor and the Social Sectors During a Period of Macroeconomic Adjustment: Empirical Evidence for Jamaica’, The WB Economic Review, Vol. 5, No. 2, 1991, p. 310.
Kari Polanyi Levitt, ‘The Origins and Consequences of Jamaica’s Debt Crisis: 1970–1990’ (Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies, Consortium Graduate School of Social Sciences, 1991 ), p. 50.
World Bank, 1996a op.cit., p. 2; Rhoda Reddock, ‘Women and Poverty in Trinidad and Tobago’, Beyond Law, Vol. 5, No. 14 (March 1995), cited in Savitri Bisnath, ‘Poverty Eradication in the Anglophone Caribbean: A Focus on Methodologies and Capacity-Building’ ( New York: United Nations Development Program, 1996 ).
Dorith Grant-Wilson, ‘Globalization, Structural Adjustment, and Democracy in Jamaica’, in Ivelaw L. Griffith and Betty N. Sedoc-Dahlberg, (eds) Democracy and Human Rights in the Caribbean ( Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997 ), p. 204.
Selwyn Ryan, ‘Democratic Governance and the Social Condition in the Anglophone Caribbean’ (New York, NY: United National Development Program, Caribbean Division, December 1995 ), p. 27.
See for example, Omar Davies and Patricia Anderson, ‘The Impact of the Recession and Adjustment Policies on Poor Urban Women in Jamaica’, in The Invisible Adjustment: Poor Women and the Economic Crisis ( Santiago, Chile: UNICEF, The Americas and The Caribbean Regional Office, 1989 ), pp. 207–36.
The Planning Institute of Jamaica, ‘Jamaica’s Poverty Eradication Policy’. July 1995, p. 5.
Richard Bernal, ‘Debt, Drugs and Development in the Caribbean’, TransAfrica Forum Vol. 9, No. 2 (Summer 1992 ), p. 85.
Richard Bernal, ‘The Vicious Circle of Foreign Indebtedness: The Case of Jamaica’, in Antonio Jorge, Jorge Salazar-Carilo and Frank Diaz-Pou (eds), External Debt and Development Strategy in Latin America ( New York: Pergamon, 1985 ), pp. 111–28.
Ivelaw Griffith, ‘Drugs in the Caribbean: An Economic Balance Sheet’. Caribbean Studies, Vol. 28, No. 2 (1995), p. 298.
Douglas Farah, ‘Caribbean Key to US Drug Trade’, Washington Post, 23 September 1996.
Canute James, ‘Exporters Fight Drug War On New Front’. Journal of Commerce, 5 August 1996.
John Hamilton, Testimony Before the House International Relations Western Hemisphere Subcommittee, 14 May 1997.
Thomas Lippman, ‘An Appeal for a Banana Peace’. The Washington Post, 6 June 1996, p. 127.
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Bernal, R.L., Leslie, W.J., Lamar, S.E. (2000). Drugs, Debt and Structural Adjustment in the Caribbean. In: Griffith, I.L. (eds) The Political Economy of Drugs in the Caribbean. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230288966_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230288966_4
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