To Sir Arthur Lewis – Industrialization To Invitation
Your strategy for the Caribbean
Remedy for overpopulation
Your antidote to relieve poverty
Inserting foreign capital for we
Into the domestic economy
Is like one of our best therapy
Also some enterprise and investment
For us all is the corrective treatment
To take advantage of all cheap labour
And the right produce manufacturer
For export to metropolitan markets
This is a strategy for no regrets
Invitation to foreign capital
To fill the void and to teach the local
The ‘tricks of the trade’ and to offer tax
And other incentives so they’re relaxed
To encourage overseas investment
For us all is the corrective treatment
An approach export-biased and driven
So the economy you’ve enlightened
You laid out elements necessary
The industrial and trade policy
Foreign investment and fiscal policy
Monetary and financial policy
In your industrial policy you list
The industries that held the most promise
Hosiery, garments, the paper trade, leather
And building materials etc. ………
The second vital element was the
Foundation; establishment of a
Trade and a development agency
An agency to base regionally
That would develop industrial centres
And factory buildings opening their doors
Agencies would act as a catalyst
Starting her new industries on the A-list
In your trade and commercial policy
Finding new markets is this strategy
You suggested that the islands first look
To themselves, North America and look
To Latin America and U. K.
Expand markets large as the Milky Way
Recommended the start of a union
The customs union among the islands
So to guarantee a minimum scale
Economic scale; production will sail
And initial market demand for we
Is the corrective prescription I see
Second, you stressed the need for strategic
Alliances to be formed with exist-
ing suppliers who already have well-
Established distribution channel
And channels in Latin America
Like the sunken beds of streams of water
Third, the integration of the region
Like the marriage of man and woman
In a federal West Indian government
For us all is the corrective treatment
A treatment that’s as needful as the sun
From one rational like King Solomon
In your foreign investment policy
Proposed foreign manufacturers be
Encouraged to open their factories
Induced by fiscal and more incentives
Including cheap labour, as cheap as dirt
Economy you wanted to convert
Foreign capitalists were to be in
-vited, to the point of wooing; fawning
To fill gaps left by the inabili
-ty of domestic capital to free
Just like a bird; development forward
The right treatment not to bring us backward
In your fixed policy you suggest
-ed, fiscal incentives to be the best,
Including tax holidays and tax ex
emptions and subsidies you all inject
-ed, with the provision of industri
-al centres, you wanted us to all see
Now; your monetary and financial
Policy stated an industrial
Development bank was to be set up
As lender of last resort or back up
Is the corrective treatment for us all
So that the economy will not fall