Public Lecture in Barbados, November 28, 2008
Our region’s entire economic history has been the story of a people’s continuous adjustment to crisis, and their development and reliance on special resources and reserves of resilience to cope with them.It should therefore not be surprising if the Caribbean fares better than many other regions in coping with the recent vicissitudes and the extraordinary economic challenges that threaten to tear apart major economies…
The recent collapse of the Doha round once again underscores the tenuous nature of international trade negotiations. Likewise, the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between the CARIFORUM grouping and the European Union (EU) has generated a great deal of discussion and debate over the past several months. What has clearly emerged is the existence of two diametrically opposed views on the impact and usefulness of the agreement.
The objective of this review is to shed some light on the issues driving this debate particularly in the areas of market access, the impact on tariff revenues, and the implications for regional integration…
Lecture at UWI Cave Hill Campus, November 20, 2008 
It is 50 years since the Federation was born; since The West Indies became, all too briefly, more than a geographic expression. However flawed the process by which we got there, however imperfect the consummation, however brief the period of promise, that moment of creation in 1958 was one of the worthiest in the history of the Caribbean region…
W. Bradford Wiley Professor of Economics, Colgate University
The debate over EPA was reminiscent of the kind of clash of ideas that occurred during the-hey day of the “New World” group of intellectuals and academics in the 1960s and 1970s. Then, as now, Caribbean integration and regional economic development were seen by these scholars as inseparable. But now in contrast to the past, the process of integration is not just an intellectual construct. There is a reality to the CSME and though it is not complete it provides a foundation upon which to build… it might yet be possible to construct a broad Caribbean nationalist coalition…
Presentation at the 35th Annual General Meeting of the Caribbean Association of Indigenous Banks, Barbados, November 18, 2008
The forging of new strategic alliances between the respective indigenous banks of the Caribbean will constitute an important element of the Single Caribbean Economy which is still worth our while to bring into existence… we have to stop doubting ourselves, and stop underestimating what we are capable of achieving in the Caribbean…
Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA), Washington D.C.
Critics argue that for over a decade, the United States has been striving to create commercial inroads into Latin America by way of bilateral free trade agreements that benefit U.S. economic interests to the detriment of those of Latin America. A recent example of this trend was the passage of the Dominican Republic – Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA), a pact designed to promote trade and foreign investment between the U.S. and its Caribbean Basin neighbors. ..When it was being negotiated, advocates of DR-CAFTA repeatedly assured skeptics that the agreement w as a “win-win” situation, arguing that it would economically benefit all countries involved…However, two years have now passed since some Central American countr ies implemented DR-CAFTA’s mandates, and governments, farmers, and workers across the region are beginning to suffer the consequences of an unfair deal. ..
Havelock R. Brewster, a national of Guyana and Jamaica, has spent most of his career in international institutions and government service. He was until recently Executive Director for the Caribbean at the Inter-American Development Bank, Washington DC, and previously Guyana’s Ambassador to the European Union, Austria, Belgium, and Germany. Earlier, he served as Special Research Adviser and Director of the Commodities Trade Division of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Geneva. Presently, he is Consultant to the Caribbean Development Bank, Hon. Professor of Economics at the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies, University of the West Indies, and Senior Associate of the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery. Ambassador Brewster is the author of a large number of journal and other publications in the field of trade, primary commodities, social and economic development analysis and policy, trade negotiations, development financing, economic integration and the Caribbean economy. He is a graduate in economics of King’s College, University of Durham, UK, and Dalhousie University, Canada. In 1993 Ambassador Brewster was awarded Guyana’s Cacique’s Crown of Honor (CCH) and in 2008 he was awarded the Degree of Doctor of Laws, Honoris Causa, of the University of the West Indies.
Havelock Brewster is the author or co-author of over two hundred refereed (*) and other articles, papers, monographs, chapters in books, attributed or institutional. Click here for a list of his selected publications.
Sir George Alleyne, Chancellor of the Universirty of the West Indies, presents the Degree of Doctor of Laws , Honoris Causa to Ambassador Havelock Brewster at the UWI Mona Campus on November 7, 2008. Following is Ambassador Brewster’s address to the Graduating Class.
Forty years ago, (the work of UWI social scientists) was greeted not as the “first port of call for regional leadership”, but with unprecedented hostility. The authors were hounded as communists, Marxists revolutionaries, conspirators with Fidel Castro, at best lunatics. The would-be reformers had passports seized, some expelled from the country, fired, threatened, and one assassinated…
Citation for Havelock’s Honorary Doctorate
For a functioning, participatory, Caribbean Democracy Stabroek News 17/11/08
The true meaning of the Obama victory is that we can dare to think the unthinkable, to dream the impossible. For the unthinkable can be within our grasp; and the impossible of today can become the reality of tomorrow. If America can elect a Black man as President, why can’t Caricom nations agree to pool their sovereignty so that we can speak with one voice in world trade and politics?..
The people are the change John Maxwell
