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.
One argument, twelve minutes, every figure sourced.
Read the full argument
On the evening of 18 September 2017, Hurricane Maria crossed Dominica. The Post-Disaster Needs Assessment produced afterwards put the damage at 226 per cent of GDP.
Not a bad quarter. Not a downgrade or a missed target. More than two years of everything the country produces, erased between dinner and dawn.
Thirteen years earlier, Hurricane Ivan had done substantially the same thing to Grenada, at 200 per cent of GDP on the OECS and World Bank assessment. And the NOAA record for the past two decades shows Category 4 and 5 Atlantic storms arriving around thirty per cent more frequently than in the preceding baseline.
The plan as written, and the event it was not drawn against.
Every figure in this piece can be checked before you give us a name.
- 01Damage from Hurricane Maria in Dominica, 2017 — 226% of GDP, grade A. Government of Dominica Post-Disaster Needs Assessment, 2017.
- 02Damage from Hurricane Ivan in Grenada, 2004 — 200% of GDP, grade A. OECS / World Bank Ivan Damage Assessment, 2004.
- 03Rise in Cat 4–5 Atlantic hurricane frequency, last two decades — 30% higher, grade B. NOAA Atlantic hurricane record, 2004–2024 vs. prior baseline.
Chamber 03 — The Scenario Engine
Rehearse every GDP-moving decision before it costs a cent.
- Sovereign Vitals — real GDP, debt-to-GDP, FX retention, primary balance, public confidence — live.
- Ripple propagation through the inter-sector dependency web.
- Goal-seek: set the target, discover the levers that reach it.
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.
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.
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.