NASSAU, Bahamas - October 1, 2010 --  The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID) will help create a new Caribbean Competitiveness Center at the University of the West Indies (UWI) with a US$750,000 grant. 

The agreement was signed today by IDB Caribbean Department Manager Gerard Johnson and E. Nigel Harris, Vice Chancellor of the University of the West Indies (UWI), in the context of a Caribbean regional forum organized by the IDB in Nassau, The Bahamas.

“The Caribbean Competitiveness Centre will provide intellectual leadership on issues related to private sector development and competitiveness,” said Johnson, “by increasing the institutional capacity to generate and share world-class and Caribbean-specific knowledge on private sector development and competitiveness.”

“The University of the West Indies is fully committed with strengthening research capabilities and training to support private sector development and competitiveness in the region.” said Nigel Harris. “The establishment of this center will put UWI at the forefront of the debate on policies to promote private sector development.”

The center will be at UWI’s St. Augustine Campus in Trinidad and Tobago and the Pro Vice Chancellor of Planning and Development, Bhoendradatt Tewarie,will be its Chairman. The center will help upgrade the technical capacity of academics and public and private sector officials in cutting edge approaches to competitiveness, business climate reforms, clustering and small and medium-sized enterprises development.

“I am sure that the center will establish a network of academics, policymakers and business leaders to share their reflections and ideas on how to move the region forward,” added Harris, who hailed the partnership as “a great vehicle to generate new ideas and policies to improve the region’s competitiveness.”

The University of the West Indies, as the premier autonomous regional higher education institution serving fifteen countries in the English-speaking Caribbean, is the ideal partner for such an initiative. The center creates a timely opportunity for the region’s academics, private sector executives and policy makers to access the best practices across the world on private sector development.

The establishment of the Caribbean Competitiveness Centre is closely related to a larger initiative, Compete Caribbean, a multimillion dollar grant facility established by the Inter-American Development Bank, the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID), and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) to provide grant funding to support productive policies, business climate reforms, clustering initiatives and small and medium-sized enterprises within a comprehensive private sector development framework in the Caribbean.