An Education Needs Assessment of CARIFORUM Firms

Natural gas, liquefied (US$465 million) Floating or submersible drilling or production platforms (US$ 406 million) "Methanol ""methyl alcohol"" (US$ 368 million) Aluminium oxide (excluding artificial corundum) (US$ 225 million) Gold, incl. gold plated with platinum, unwrought, for non monetary purposes (US$ 175 million)

Services Increasing investments and competitiveness in the modes of delivering services. Other cross-cutting areas of work include Statistics ; Crime and Security ; Education ; Environment and Sustainable Development ; Transportation ; Foreign Policies and Community Relations ; Trade Negotiations ; Gender ; Youth Development ; and Human Development .

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Digital Transformation The Caribbean Digital

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Transformation Project has three components including a digital ecosystem, digital infrastructure, platforms and services and digital skills and entrepreneurship. Current activities under this project include updating legislation and regulatory frameworks for digital financial services, developing an overarching payment system strategy for the region; undertaking a demand-side survey on financial literacy; and establishing a quality-of-service monitoring and enforcement methodology and capacity and a survey/assessment to identify the technical and soft skills in greatest demand among digitally enabled industries for the purpose of facilitating remote work. Other cross-cutting economic areas of work include Statistics and Trade . Other broad areas include Environmental Sustainability (Biodiversity, Climate and Disaster Resilience, Energy and Ocean Governance) , Human and Social ( Health, Pharmaceuticals Gender Equality, Social Development, Education, Youth ) and Diplomatic work areas.

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*(Data sourced from ITC Trade Map)

Main Dominican Republic goods exports to EU (2019)*: • Fresh or dried bananas

(excluding plantains) (US$ 236 million) Ferro-nickel (US$ 108 million) Cocoa beans, whole or broken, raw or roasted (US$ 91 million) Instruments and appliances used in medical, surgical or veterinary sciences, n.e.s. (US$ 60 million) Rum and other spirits obtained by distilling fermented sugar cane products (US$ 53 million)

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*(Data sourced from ITC Trade Map)

Source: CARICOM (2022c); CARICOM (2022d); OECS (2022); European Commission (2020); OAS (2022); ITC Trade Map (2022)

These regional priorities are reflected by and large in the national priorities of many CARIFORUM

states. Most CARIFORUM states are considered services-based economies focused mainly on

tourism and financial services, except for Belize, Guyana, Suriname, and Trinidad & Tobago

which are often considered commodities-based given their heavy dependence on the oil and gas,

mining, and agriculture sectors (Brathwaite, Nicholls, and Remy 2020). Annex 3 provides detailed

insights on updated national priority sectors drawing from the latest budget speeches and national

reports of each CARIFORUM state. Analysing the trends in Annex 3 reveals two key findings.

Firstly, apart from traditional sectors like agriculture, manufacturing, and tourism, several

countries are interested in new and innovative areas, particularly the digital economy and FinTech,

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