All in the same boat: Kaye Whiteman reports from Port of Spain on the Commonwealth Business Council Forum meeting held in the wings of the Commonwealth summit.

Over the years, the Commonwealth Business Council (CBC) Forum has slowly built a reputation as an indispensable arm of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), having a direct interplay with the political meeting. This is demonstrated within the report that the CBC always makes to the heads of state and their delegations, written during the three days of the Forum prior to the CHOGM summit itself beginning.

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The CBC Forum is but one of the four institutions that meets under CHOGM. CHOGM is the pivot at the centre of three other manifestations of the multiple identity of the strange phenomenon known as the Commonwealth: the People's Forum and the Youth Forum, as well as the CBC Forum itself. The CBC was inaugurated in 1997 as the private sector arm of the Commonwealth.

Although the Caribbean has not previously been one of the major fields of CBC activity, it is a region that often has to live on its wits and where the sort of dialogue and networking for partnerships that feature at CBC events is well understood. So much so that it succeeded in attracting over 1,000 participants, some of them from non-Commonwealth countries, interested in examining the possibilities of the event. To the satisfaction of CBC's director-general, Mohan Kaul, this was the highest number ever to attend a CBC Forum.

The title of the CBC Forum took the bland theme of the CHOGM summit itself -Partnership for a More Equitable and Sustainable Future--but it gained more focus by adding the subtitle The Commonwealth and the Americas which, although referring above all to the Caribbean, by implication took in North and South America, including the great shadow of the US.

It is still fresh in the memory of Trinidad that President Obama's first visit in the western hemisphere was to the Summit of the Americas, also held in Trinidad, in April 2009. This was part of Trinidad Prime Minister Patrick Manning's ambitious plan to put his country on the international map as part of the design to become an industrialised nation by the year 2020. The element of 'the Americas' was highlighted by the presence at the opening ceremony of Jose Miguel Insulza, Secretary-General of the Organisation of American States (OAS), who made the right noises about climate change and the need to support small states, but also spoke of the need for greater solidarity in the present economic crisis, saying "greater unity between the countries of the Americas and the Commonwealth is vital in the current global economic climate".

In practice, most of the leaders who spoke were from the islands of the Caribbean, and there was a solid participation from the burgeoning business community of Trinidad and Tobago itself.

Star of the show

The star of the opening ceremony was undoubtedly American Nobel Prize winner Professor Joseph Stiglitz, currently riding high as a seer proved right in the present global crisis. His remark on the paramount need for international solidarity--"we are all in the same boat"--was picked up and quoted as a leitmotif by speakers throughout the CBC Forum, not least because it was taking place on a massive cruise ship, The Serenade of the Seas, moored on the waterfront of Port of Spain. It was not the only Stiglitz nostrum that participants repeated in diverse speeches. He also repeated what observers all over Africa and the rest of the world have been stating for the past year--that the present global economic and financial crisis had been 'born in the USA', and spread to the rest of the world.

There was also a good-humoured but significant exchange between Stiglitz and Patrick Manning, after the former questioned whether, in Trinidad, enough investment was being made in the area of "sustainable economic diversification", or purely in industry. To which Manning said that Stiglitz had cautioned about the need to diversify from oil and gas, but this was the same warning that had originally been made when oil was just beginning to flow in the early 20th century. When oil prices fell in the 1980s, Trinidad had been hard hit, he said, but in the country's present financial situation, there was less cause for concern. He was much more worried about the economic condition of Trinidad's Caribbean neighbours.

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Manning, an increasingly authoritative (and authoritarian) leader, is someone we will hear more from, especially as he is the Commonwealth's chairperson until 2011. He already has a track record of contacts with Africa, having proposed to the AU a technical assistance agreement with seven West and Southern African oil producers. Two East African countries have now been added to the technical assistance programme.

Trinidad and Tobago hosted an African Energy Ministers' conference in May 2009. During CHOGM, there were moves to sign memoranda of understanding between representatives of Nigeria and Ghana and the South Trinidad Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Otunba Funso Lawal of the Petroleum Club of Nigeria said the prospects for doing business were promising.

Rwanda becomes member

Representatives of the oil and gas sector formed an important part of the Nigerian participation of around 40 delegates. Imo Itsueli, one of Nigeria's most senior oil men, said that apart from the technical assistance that Trinidad could give Nigeria, there was also plenty of advice Nigeria could give to Trinidad on "how to manage success" and avoid some of the mistakes Nigeria had made, especially in the business of gas which "we don't seem able to cope with". Referring to the bursting of the Dubai bubble, he said: "The disease we had in Nigeria, Dubai had it 10 times over."

The main Nigerian presentation to the CBC Forum came from Plateau State Governor Jonah Jang and Trade Minister Achike Udenwa. There was also a strong presence from Diamond Bank, including its chairman, Igwe Emeka Achebe and chief executive Emeka Onwuka, as well as its former boss for many years, Pascal Dozie, who for the next two years will be the joint chairman of the Commonwealth Business Council with Allan Fields of Barbados.

The other notable African presence at the CBC Forum was Rwanda. Its membership of the 'club' was approved in Trinidad, two years after it had submitted its application. One of its biggest assets was its strong regional support as an enthusiastic member of the East African Community. At this year's Forum, there was not only an 'Investment Window on Rwanda' session, but a special lunch organised by the Rwanda Development Board.

Despite all the sombre words on the present global crisis, the CHOGM communique included an interesting recognition that many Commonwealth members, including some in Africa "had demonstrated encouraging and significant resilience reflecting the presence of stronger macro-economic and other frameworks". This found an echo in the closing remarks by outgoing CBC chairperson Paul Skinner (chairman of Rio Tinto) about the global economic shift of gravity towards emerging markets. The corporate world had already shifted to "think G20 and beyond".

The Commonwealth, he observed, was "a potentially unique player in the next phase of globalisation. It is the home of some of the best technologies and business models: energy management, SME development, ICT, improving good governance, access to finance, to name a few. The level of interaction between business, government and civil society has grown dramatically with globalisation, and helped spread democracy".