Saint Lucia's export chief Sunita Daniel to lead Caribbean Export Development Agency

The chief executive of Export Saint Lucia, Sunita Daniel, has been chosen to chair the Caribbean Export Development Agency, a regional body that supports enterprise, trade and investment across the Caribbean. The appointment was confirmed at the agency's 46th meeting of its Board of Directors, where Ishmael Quiroz, executive director of Belize's trade and investment service BELTRAIDE, was named her deputy.

As reported by The Voice St. Lucia News, the vote coincides with Caribbean Export marking three decades of work with businesses across the region, making this handover of leadership a notable moment for the agency as it sets its direction for the years ahead.

Ms Daniel is an economist who has run Export Saint Lucia for eight years. In that time she and her colleagues have worked to raise both the worth and the quantity of goods the island sells abroad, a task that matters greatly to the economy of Saint Lucia, where exports of produce, rum, cocoa and manufactured goods sit alongside tourism as pillars of national income.

Her career stretches well beyond that role. She has held the post of chief planning officer for agriculture in Saint Lucia's public service, and earlier worked as a programme liaison officer to the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States on secondment to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Policy and planning, trade facilitation, agricultural and business development, and raising funds for development projects all fall within her professional experience.

In a statement after her election, Ms Daniel said she felt honoured that her regional peers had placed their confidence in her. She spoke of a wish to lift Caribbean talent, creativity and enterprise to greater levels of prosperity both at home and overseas, and argued that through innovation and cooperation among neighbouring states, businesses from the region should help shape global trade rather than simply take part in it. The Caribbean, she declared, is open for business, investment and hospitality.

Dr Damie Sinanan, the agency's executive director, welcomed both appointments and said their experience would be valuable as Caribbean Export continues its work with the region's businesses. Mr Quiroz, who brings more than twenty years in public service with a background in private sector development, investment promotion and improving the business climate in Belize, affirmed BELTRAIDE's commitment to the deputy role and to the wider push to grow regional exports.

Caribbean Export exists to encourage cooperation between governments, development partners and the private sector as the region pursues its trade and investment goals. Its mandate reaches into sectors that visitors to the island encounter directly. The goods that arrive on shelves in Britain, from chocolate made from island-grown cocoa to small-batch spirits from rum distilleries in St Lucia, often owe their route to market to the kind of export support this agency coordinates.

For the tourism trade, the appointment also carries weight. Export development and visitor arrivals feed each other: the same producers who supply hotels in St Lucia with local fruit, chocolate and craft beer are the businesses the agency helps to professionalise and promote. Many of the experiences that draw people to book holidays to St Lucia, from estate tours to farmers' markets in Castries, depend on a healthy community of local producers.

The visitor economy is closely tied to the export story in other ways too. Guests staying at all-inclusive resorts in St Lucia consume largely local produce, and the island's culinary reputation, built on green fig and saltfish, fresh seafood and cocoa grown in the interior hills, is itself a form of soft export promotion. Every visitor who samples the island's cooking becomes an ambassador for its products abroad.

Saint Lucia's regional credentials also come into play. The island hosts the executive secretariat of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States, giving Castries an administrative role out of proportion to its size, and shares the Eastern Caribbean dollar with its neighbours through the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union. Ms Daniel's earlier OECS posting gives her first-hand knowledge of how that machinery works, which should serve her well in a chairmanship that depends on consensus among many small states.

Ms Daniel's election is also a signal to partners further afield. Agencies such as Invest Saint Lucia and the Saint Lucia Tourism Authority work to bring investment and visitors to the island, whether that means new property in St Lucia being developed for the villa market or airlines adding capacity on routes that carry flights to St Lucia from London and other gateways. A Saint Lucian voice at the head of the region's export agency strengthens the island's hand in those conversations.

As chairperson, Ms Daniel will take part in the strategic oversight of Caribbean Export, drawing on her background in trade facilitation, policy and business development to advance the agency's regional mandate. No timetable for specific new initiatives has been announced, but with the agency marking its thirtieth year and new leadership in place at the top, attention will now turn to how the body builds on three decades of supporting Caribbean enterprise.