Passing on the baton
I will like to promote the concept of “Picking up and passing on the Baton” - In Track & Field a baton is a short stick or tube passed from runner to runner in a relay race. I would like you to go back with me to three decades ago (some of you won’t know what I am talking about because you were barely a thought to your parents, but nevertheless, let’s go to the stories we’ve heard and see what we have missed) to Maurice Bishop times; while most Caribbean nations suffered terribly from worldwide recession, Grenada achieved a 9 percent cumulative growth rate. Unemployment dropped from 49 percent to 14 percent. The government diversified agriculture, developed cooperatives and created an agri-industrial base that led to a reduction of the percentage of food and total imports from more than 40 percent to 28 percent at a time when market prices for agricultural products were collapsing worldwide. The literacy rate, already at a respectable 85 percent, grew to about 98 percent, c