Small Commonwealth countries must learn from each other, says Garcia

The Deputy Chief Minister Dr Joseph Garcia participated in a round table discussion with Commonwealth and business leaders at a meeting of the Commonwealth Business Forum on Wednesday.

This is one of a number of events taking place parallel to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) this week in Apia, Samoa.

The theme of the discussion was unlocking access to finance and increasing the resilience of small countries.

Participants included Prime Ministers and Ministers from a number of them including Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Cayman Islands, Tonga, Samoa, Nauru and The Maldives.

Dr Garcia outlined the steps taken by Gibraltar to increase its own resilience in a number of areas, particularly electricity generation, water supply and telecommunications infrastructure.

“Gibraltar may not be a geographical island but it was a political island,” he said.

He set out how both the upgrading of internal infrastructure through the transformation of the telephone cable network from copper to fibre optic, and the participation in the undersea EIG cable from India to the UK laid the foundations for the successful digital economy that Gibraltar knows today.

“In many areas this was executed through joint venture companies between the Government of Gibraltar and international partners,” he said.

In a statement from the Government it said that Dr Garcia also pointed to the new LNG power station and to solar panel projects as further examples which increased the resilience of Gibraltar and improved our environmental footprint.

The Deputy Chief Minister, who is the Minister with responsibility for developing relations with the Commonwealth, told delegates that small Commonwealth countries across the globe faced similar challenges and that it was important to learn from each other by taking part in events of this kind.