KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent - St. Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Dr. Godwin Friday, Monday urged Caribbean countries that in order to modernise public financial management effectively, there must clearly distinguish between what is simple digitisation that is merely replicating paper forms in a digital environment and real digital transformation, where business processes are re-engineered to be digital by design.
Prime Minister Dr. Godwin Friday addressing weeklong regional conference on harnessing AI for development (CMC Photo)Addressing the regional workshop on artificial intelligence (AI) in public financing management for Small island Developing States (SIDS), Friday said that in years gone by, governments across the region debated and approved estimates of revenue and expenditure .
“Behind these figures, in that thick, sterile document, lie the efforts of ministers and their permanent secretaries to garner the scarce resources to be used to provide the essential functions of government,” he told the delegates from across the region.
He said that for SIDS, limited capacity and scarce resources leave very little room for waste, duplication, or poor decision making.
“Yet we know these flaws persist,” he said, noting that in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, the fiscal responsibility framework recognises that credible budget preparation, disciplined programme execution, and reliable fiscal forecasting are critical to creating and maintaining public confidence in government and to ensuring fiscal sustainability.
“However, many of our existing systems were designed for a bygone era. They are characterised by ministerial and departmental silos, manual data entry, and excessive reporting delays and folios, up to folios of paper.”
Friday said that this results in higher risks of the waste, duplication, and poor decision making, adding that grounded in the International Monetary Fund’s(IMF) digital solutions guidelines for public financial management, ”our efforts must align with reforming functional business processes, building adaptive and interoperable IT architecture, and modernising legal and data governance frameworks.
“We are all aware of the incessant drumbeat of AI. We know the times are changing and as the songwriter says, we better start swimming or we will sink like a spoon”.
But Prime Minister Friday told the conference that as artificial intelligence begins to reshape fiscal operations “we must avoid adopting technology in isolation or getting misguided by the hype.
“We must instead be guided by what delivers the greatest value for us. We must not invent problems simply so that AI could solve them. Rather, we must see how AI solves the problems,” he said, adding that when deployed with clear purpose, emerging technologies can be of great benefit to everyone.
“But it must always remain a tool, not an end in itself. Digital transformation also requires breaking down institutional silos,” he said, reiterating the need to “avoid adopting technology in isolation or getting misguided by the hype.
“We must instead be guided by what delivers the greatest value for us. We must not invent problems simply so that AI could solve them. Rather, we must see how AI solves the problems, as was said earlier, that we have now. ”
He said that the eruption of La Soufriere Volcano here a few years ago, five years ago, ) and the devastation caused by Hurricane Beryl in 2024, demonstrated how swiftly and how thoroughly natural disasters can disrupt ordinary life, economic activity, and government’s operations.
“For climate-vulnerable small island developing states like us, physical resilience and digital resilience are inseparable. As our public financial management systems become increasingly data-driven and interconnected, cyber resilience, robust data backups, and secure safeguards must be embedded from the start to ensure systems remain reliable under severe pressure.
“We have seen what happens when that fails. Hurricane Beryl taught us well. Lessons we need not repeat. Technology such as AI is an enabler for our public offices. It is not a substitute for human accountability.”
Friday said that artificial intelligence cannot fix a fundamentally flawed process, nor can algorithms replace professional judgement, institutional ethics, and public oversight.
“Not yet, anyway. We must continually invest in training our people so they are equipped to work effectively with emerging tools such as AI,” he said, urging the delegates to challenge themselves, examining what has worked and what did not work.
“Learn from one another. We are a common economic space. So, by helping one another, we’re helping ourselves,” he added.
The weeklong conference is being held under the theme “Adapting Financial Management for AI: Harnessing Digital by Design”. It is being held in collaboration with the IMF and the Caribbean regional Technical Assistance Centre (CARTAC).
