Ask a minister what their portfolio contributes.
In most governments that question starts a procurement. Weeks later a consultant returns a figure and the Ministry of Finance disputes it. Meanwhile one sector carries most of the economy and every other ministry is arguing blind.
One argument, twelve minutes, every figure sourced.
Read the full argument
Ask any minister in the region what their portfolio contributes to national GDP.
In most governments, that question begins a procurement. A consultant is engaged. Some weeks later a figure returns, and the Ministry of Finance disputes the methodology. The minister, who wanted a number for a Cabinet paper due on Thursday, has spent money to acquire an argument.
I have watched this cycle enough times to be confident it is the norm rather than the exception, and it produces a specific kind of government: one in which ministers advocate for their portfolios without knowing what those portfolios are worth.
Concentration, drawn to scale.
Every figure in this piece can be checked before you give us a name.
- 01Direct and indirect tourism contribution, upper-band Caribbean states — 80% of GDP, grade B. WTTC Economic Impact Reports, 2019–2023.
- 02United States share of stopover arrivals, dominant across the region — 1 source market, grade B. CTO Latest Statistics, 2023.
Chamber 02 — Portfolio Workspaces
Every minister sees their contribution to GDP — and the levers that raise it.
- Sector position, dependency web, and the portfolio's share of national exposure.
- A shelf of the minister's scenarios, from draft through Cabinet-adopted.
- Play-of-the-day cards derived from live lever values.
Adam Anderson is the founder of OPEN Interactive and the author of the GDPVision instrument. He writes for principals, not for procurement.
The region is being asked to replace half its revenue with the instruments of the last century.
Citizenship by Investment reaches half of government revenue in the upper band of five OECS states, and its phase-out has a date. The harder problem is that the region is being asked to engineer that transition using evidence that arrives eighteen months late.
Governing from a photograph.
Authoritative sector data reaches a Caribbean Cabinet roughly eighteen months after the period it describes. We ask governments to steer an economy using a picture of where it used to be — and then to defend the picture as though it were a window.
Two hundred and twenty-six per cent, in a single night.
Hurricane Maria cost Dominica more than two years of national output in one evening. Every fiscal plan in this region is written inside a hurricane corridor. Almost none of them is rehearsed against one.
The date is set. The replacement is not.
Five OECS states built a revenue pillar that Brussels has now scheduled for demolition. The question is no longer whether to diversify. It is whether anyone has priced the hole.
Zero seats.
The OECS holds no votes on the body setting the global minimum tax. When the rules that price your economy are written elsewhere, the one thing still within your control is whether you arrive at the argument prepared.
What happened to the decision?
Minutes record what was said. They do not record what was decided, who carries it, or whether it landed. In economies where a quarter of revenue is spoken for before Cabinet sits, that gap is not untidiness. It is money.
We are exporting the people we need, and guessing at how to keep them.
Up to seventy per cent of tertiary-educated citizens have left the upper band of Caribbean states. Retention policy is written, announced, and only then discovered to have missed the people it was written for.
Someone will grade your manifesto. It should be you.
Every government publishes a programme and then loses track of it. The scorecard gets built regardless — by a journalist, an NGO, or the opposition. The only real choice is whose numbers the public sees first.