Abstract 
of the speech at the conference on "Gender Budgets, Financial Markets, Financing for Development", February 19th and 20th 2002 at the Heinrich-Boell Foundation in Berlin.

Introduction
"Currently in the Caribbean and Latin America region, and more pointedly in countries such as Jamaica, there is an ongoing process of political restructuring, and institutional restructuring of labour, goods and financial markets. These institutional changes in labour market, product, social development and aspects of governance are part of the broader process of globalisation and liberalisation and the material and ideological restructuring that it is engendering in Caribbean and Latin American countries. These changes have important implications for critical issues of government budgets and taxation policies that underlie issues of gender equality, social and human development as well as the nature and dynamics of governance and citizenship in the nations in the region.

This restructuring along with the ongoing compositional and structural change in the agro-to- industrial-to-service profiles of many of the Caribbean and Latin American nations has manifested itself in dramatic changes in employment, the pattern and location of production and, coupled with trade liberalisation, marks a movement toward greater integration in the region. The economic integrative process directly affects the aggregate economic performance of the nation. But it will have dramatic impacts on investment, government spending, exchange rate and interest rate movements which will profoundly impact community development, human security/ social protection, and hence, the overall well-being of the children, men and women in each of the nations."
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Summary and recommendation
"Though globalisation and liberalisation create an atmosphere whereby, through a plethora of trade agreements (NAFTA, FTAA, WTOA etc), governments’ decisions are increasingly externally constrained, there is still wide scope for government to act. Caribbean governments, like other governments, have significant scope for discretion in the exercise of national policy and in the management and control of national resources. Thus governments have a duty to play an effective role in promoting and ensuring an enabling environment where all citizens can exercise their rights as citizens to create meaningful opportunities that allow for the development and use of human potential and capacity in the service of the community. However, this points to the need for a national vision of, and consensus and commitment to that vision, of what a good society is or should be? What are critical elements that must be in place? And how key institutions ought to function in order to ensure such a society.

In order for countries such as those in the Caribbean to be able to promote sustainable gender sensitive human development at the international level there needs to be:

• Selectivity in liberalisation of trade, investment and labour markets that balances the rights of children, women and men and even the nation state against the pecuniary aspects of global economic competition.
  
• Debt cancellation and debt write-offs as a minimum necessary step to promoting sustainable human and gender sensitive development
  
• Capital controls on the movement of international capital, including a process of ‘financial disarmament’ (Damodaram): a freeze or extensive tightening of speculative instruments, couple with an expansionary but prudent macroeconomic policy approach as a minimum necessary condition to promote sustainable growth and human development world-wide. In this regard we agree with J. Bhagwati that “…it is a lot of humbug to say that without free portfolio capital mobility somehow the world cannot function and growth will collapse”.
  
• International supervisory mechanisms to oversee the international movement of capital and regulate the allocation of credit. In this regard we agree with the views of Soros that the private market is inefficient in the international allocation of capital and support the sentiments of R. Mc Kinnon who wrote that “paradoxically, a de-regulated financial system may need more supervision that one that is subjected to extensive administrative controls and government intervention”.

At the national and regional levels Caribbean governments should:

• strive to maintain strategic use of investment, finance and trade including domestic content requirement, universal service provision and special programs for vulnerable groups. They should also encourage development of local firms and entrepreneurs through measures such as preferences and tax breaks to local investors, farmers and women entrepreneurs.
  
• Prioritise the social sector for public financing and refrain from opening this sector to o unbridled privatisation. Some sectors should be restricted to the entry of foreign investment. Particular attention must be paid in order to ensure that they are not switching from public monopoly to inefficient private monopoly which will eventual result in increased cost and lack of some vital services to citizens, especially the poor.
  
• Retain the rights to institute requirements on foreign investment in order to protect the balance of payment and meet the foreign exchange needs of the economy. These include resort to local content requirement, import restrictions, conditions on profit repatriation and retained earnings and listing on local stock exchange; and 2) Furthermore each state needs to undertake policy to promote and nurture local enterprise, enhance domestic savings and foster investment focusing improving the social and economic circumstances of women, the most marginalized and excluded sectors based on race, ethnicity and indigenous peoples."

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Aktualisiert: 13.02.2005