Colonial Origins, Institutions, and Socioeconomic Progress in the Caribbean: Guyana and Barbados

Michael DaCosta
Additional contact information
Michael DaCosta: Economics Consultant

Chapter Chapter 5 in Economic Challenges in Early 21st Century Guyana, 2024, pp 113-152 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract The countries that were once British colonies in the Caribbean share a common language and history of slavery, dominance of a plantation-based sugar industry, and broadly similar government and administrative traditions. Following independence in the late-1960s economic strategies and performance across the region diverged, but by the end of the 1980s, economic policies converged with the orthodoxy supported by the international financial institutions. Despite this, socio-economic indicators in Guyana and Barbados continued to diverge in the subsequent decades. This chapter explores some of the origins of that divergence, and particularly, those institutional factors that derive from the countries’ history, geography, and political developments. In Guyana, while the focus by the government on growth and fiscal policy has been important, sustained social progress has been hampered by weak institutions, particularly related to political stability. The country’s emergence since 2020 as a major oil producer has evidenced other weaknesses. These include the poor governance of initial contract negotiations with the oil companies and limited capacity for monitoring the companies’ finances. These weaknesses have diminished significantly the benefits accruing to the country from oil. Unless Guyana addresses its fundamental institutional shortcomings oil production will reflect in unprecedented rates of growth of GDP and average incomes, but will not deliver political stability nor a sustained improvement in citizens’ well-being.

Keywords: Colonial; CARICOM; Progress; Socio-economic; Guyana (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-031-75019-9_5

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783031750199

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-75019-9_5

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().