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.

'We will all live to regret it', Professor Girvan warns that EPA could widen inequalities among Caricom states

LEADING Caribbean scholar of the political economy, Professor Norman Girvan, has said the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between the CARIFORUM group and the European Commission could create wide inequalities among Caricom member states and fragment the Community.

Addressing the closing session of the ninth annual Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies (SALISES) conference at the University of the West Indies, Mona, Friday evening, Girvan called the EPA "an agreement we will all live to regret at a time not too far into the future".

The EPA, which was brokered last December, gives Caribbean countries duty and quota free access in goods (with the temporary exception of rice and sugar) and services to EU, and is supposed to be the replacement for preferential trade agreements.

Read the complete article at:
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/html/20080329T180000-0500_134009_OBS__WE_WILL_ALL_LIVE_TO_REGRET_IT__.asp

Professor Norman Girvan, Member of the South Centre Board, Honoured

This year's Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies (SALISES) conference was held in honour of Professor Norman Girvan, from 26th to 28th March, under the theme, 'Reinventing the political economy tradition of the Caribbean’ at the Mona’s Visitors Lodge, University of West Indies, Mona.

Dr. Girvan is a Professorial Research Fellow at the Institute of International Relations, University of West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and also a member of the Board of the South Centre. Dr. Girvan is well known in the Caribbean region for his scholarship and public advocacy in a wide range of issues of Caribbean development and integration. Dr. Girvan combines an academic background with experience in government and international organizations.