Several thousand islands, five colonial masters with distinct languages, disparate legal systems, vastly different levels of development, thousands of square miles of open sea — does anybody seriously think of the Caribbean as a single place?
Investors do, and that matters to the 32 members of various rank of Caricom, the Caribbean free trade bloc and principal voice of the otherwise only loosely related countries. Figuring out how they have organized to attract foreign investment is the first step toward grasping the opportunies in vast parts of the economic picture there, including serious energy, tourism and agriculture dollars.
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done
Get started with U.S.-side advocates
The government's U.S. Commercial Service aims to place U.S. exporters in Caribbean markets, and can help with market research, events and business matching.
I recommend: Find out in detail at the
U.S. Commercial Service page dedicated to Caribbean opportunities.
Compare and contrast business environments
It's not all of the Caribbean, but major economies including Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Trinidad and Tobago and the "saints," including St. Lucia and St. Kitts and Nevis, can be researched at the World Bank.
I recommend: How many days to hire and fire, get credit, or create (and dissolve) and business. The World Bank crunches the numbers in its
Doing Business online database.
Find the free trade advantage
Central America is a bit farther afield, but the recently signed DR-Cafta trade deal makes it much easier to sell into the Dominican Republic, one of the Caribbean's largest and most advanced economies.
I recommend: Read up on DR-Cafta and what opportunities await at
BuyUSA.com.
Locate friendly faces in-country
Major Caribbean economies friendly to U.S. investment operate their own, domestic American Chamber of Commerce.
I recommend: Commonly called "Amchams," the biggest are in
Dominican Republic,
Jamaica and
Trinidad and Tobago.
In the tourism business? Welcome to sun-n-sand central
One of the biggest moneymakers in the Caribbean is, of course, endless sunshine and aqua-blue water. If you supply, source or otherwise deal with tourism, this is the place to be.
I recommend: The
Caribbean Tourism Organization runs a data-rich site with plenty of updated stats. The
Caribbean Hotel Assocation runs a tourism-centered site that nonetheless organizes the major players in hospitality.
Work through investment-hungry government agencies
Several of the largest are looking to create the "Irish miracle" of clean, highly-paid jobs in a Caribbean setting. They'll have incentives and plenty of free help and advice.
I recommend: Jampro is the Jamaican investment promotion agency. Dominican Republic has a similar organization,
the CEI-RD. In Trinidad, it's
TIDCO.
And what about the Bahamas?
Although tremendously well-known in the United States due to heavy tourism over the years, the Bahamas are not technically part of what is called the Caribbean by geographers.
I recommend: Doesn't mean you can't do business there. A good starting point is the Bahamanian government's investment site,
InvestBahamas.
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