Sir K. Dwight Venner
Institution-building is a difficult task anywhere, but especially so in the Caribbean where institutions are often undermined by particular interests, or fall into desuetude for lack of commitment or funding, or both.
Dwight Venner, who died in St Lucia on December 22, was an institution builder. He took the reins of a mere currency board and transformed it into a sub-regional central bank which took its rightful place alongside other central banks in the region.
Much of this was due to Venner’s personality, self-confidence and drive.
I knew Dwight for about 38 years. When I taught Monetary Economics at The UWI, St Augustine, he taught the same course at Mona, where he had done his university training. It was there, under the influence of George Beckford, Norman Girvan, and others, in an environment of considerable intellectual ferment, Venner, with his trademark big Afro hairstyle, acquired his deep commitment to the Caribbean region and his powerful desire to improve the standing of the small islands of the Eastern Caribbean. These small islands, whose ‘agony’ following the break-up of the West Indian Federation Arthur Lewis had previously lamented, were Venner’s home and his passion.
The governorship of the ECCB gave Venner a platform from which he could really influence the development of these islands. He had already left academia to work as a senior public servant in St Lucia. But the central bank was a more powerful and influential stage, suited to Venner’s aspirations, which were as large as his Afro! He transformed the central bank by instituting modern central banking and banking legislation and he also set about fostering the establishment of the sub-regional stock exchange and a home mortgage bank. He had help from the Caribbean Development Bank and the Caricom Secretariat, and he had precedents to follow from Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and in Barbados.
It also helped that many of the players in those institutions were friends and former colleagues from his UWI days and, like all regionalists, he was comfortably at home in any country in the West Indies.
Many came to admire Venner’s ability to deal with eight governments and eight prime ministers in the sub-region. This was not as hard as one might think because he quickly acquired considerable stature and respect among the politicians within the sub-region. In addition, the ability of any one government or prime minister to interfere was limited by the ECCB’s inability to finance government deficits and its incapacity to create domestic money owing to the requirement for 100 per cent foreign exchange backing of the currency issue and a fixed US dollar parity. It was not hard for Venner to say “no” because he could not say “yes”!
This is neither the time nor place to assess Venner’s tenure and legacy as a West Indian economist or central banker. That must come. But such an assessment would need to question the role of central banks in broader development policy, including institutional development of the financial sector; it would need to challenge the viability of small, so-called ‘indigenous’ banks which do not have the capital and the scale of operations to deal with contemporary prudential and compliance regulations; it would need to examine how the relationship between regional central banks and the multilateral institutions such as the IMF needs to be managed, and ultimately, whether it is good for any organisation, political party, or government to be led by one person for an extended period spanning over two decades.
As a friend and former central banking colleague, my judgment may well be biased, but there is no question in my mind that Dwight Venner’s contributions to Caribbean economic development, and in particular the Eastern Caribbean, are notable. He did not merely hold office or mark time or enjoy perks. He worked very hard in the cause of Caribbean financial and economic development and, at his untimely passing so soon after retirement, I salute a true West Indian patriot.
By Terrence Farrell for Trinidad Express
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