In the past two weeks, three prominent Caribbean leaders - two current and one former -have sounded the alarm on the overall impact that the global financial crisis will have on the region in the long term. None of them minced their words.

Sir K. Dwight Venner, Governor of the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB), in his June 29 presentation of the ECCB’s Annual Report posited that given the dire financial environment around the globe, members of the Currency Union could find themselves virtually shut out in the struggle for aid funds from developed nations.

He pointed out that most of the Union’s island-nations are viewed as having relatively high per-capita incomes. None are particularly populous, or located in key geographic areas (except for tourism), and therefore lack the ‘selling points’ readily in evidence for places like Sub-Saharan Africa, and other hard-hit areas, such as Haiti.

These sentiments were echoed by Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding, who in a speech at the opening ceremonies of the 31st Meeting of the Conference of CARICOM Heads of Government this week noted that most of the countries in the region were not viewed as poor enough for “special treatment”, yet not advanced enough not to need it.

Rounding out the trio, former prime minister of Barbados, Owen Arthur, recently told a gathering of chartered accountants in the Bahamas that the developed world had not lived up to its promises to support the region financially through the global crisis. He complained that the island-nations were not granted access to set-aside funds for developing nations, which are commonly used for important national agenda items, such as job creation programs.

Quite a dilemma to be in, especially as the global financial crisis promises to put a slow stranglehold on the one income sector that virtually all Caribbean nations depend on – tourism.

So, ‘belt tightening’ will become the order of the day, whether we like it or not. Making the situation all the more dire, according to a list published in the CIA Factbook earlier this year, St. Kitts and Nevis is ranked third in the world when measured by public debt as a percentage of GDP.

In conclusion, ‘making do’ with less is not necessarily a bad thing. Getting back to basics and away from the ‘bling’ culture of excessive spending will most assuredly rack up many societal positives down the road. How much the national belt will have to be tightened, we’ll have to see, but it is a reality that cannot be avoided.