Cuba: The Debt is Unpayable

On 3 December 2008, Professor Norman Girvan (Board Member of the South Centre), a former economic adviser to the late Jamaican Prime Minister Michael Manley, one of the founders of the Association of Caribbean Economists and later a former secretary-general of the Association of Caribbean States (ACS), was the recipient of an honorary degree of Doctor of Economic Sciences from the University of Havana.

There have been three recipients of honorary doctorates from the University of Havana since Eric Williams - the historian and first prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago - became the first to have been so honoured back in 1975. The others were the Jamaican scholar Keith Ellis (1999); the noted political novelist and commentator George Lamming (2007) and followed by Professor Girvan.

Click here to read the remarks (The Debt is Unpayable) made by Professor Girvan at the Great Hall of the University of Havana on receipt of the degree of Doctor of Economic Sciences, Honoris Causa.