Epilogue

Abstract

The external economic environment is changing faster than the small Caribbean countries can adjust to it. The technology gap is wider on the supply side than on the demand side as people more readily acquire first-world consumption habits than businesses acquire first-world production practices. Small size has put a crimp on export manufacturing as an instrument of diversification, and the ability to transform primary products into finished products has been limited to the domestic market. This limitation influences not only production efficiency but also the cost of marketing food products and meeting the regulatory standards of developed country markets.