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CARIBBEAN: Integrate or Perish, Regional Leaders Warn

Peter Richards

KINGSTON, Feb 1 2006 (IPS) - Caribbean Community leaders were in an upbeat mood as they prepared to leave Jamaica Wednesday, having formally launched the long anticipated Caricom Single Market (CSM) and agreed on a six-month timetable to create a regional fund to finance the initiative.

The pomp and ceremony that accompanied the launch of the CSM, the first component of the Caricom Single Market and Economy, underscored the theme of “integrate or perish” that underpins the region’s fight for survival in a changing global environment characterised by the loss of preferential treatment for Caribbean goods on the international market.

By launching the CSM, the Caribbean joined some 194 other trade blocs globally.

“There have been unexpected curves and several obstacles along the way,” said host Prime Minister P.J. Patterson, the respected Caribbean elder statesman who is making his exit from regional politics later this year.

“This ceremony establishes beyond a doubt that our regional organisation has weathered the political turbulence and economic storms, external and domestic, of its adolescent years,” he said.

Fittingly, the Caribbean leaders chose a hallmark of regional unity, the University of the West Indies, to formally launch their single market 17 years after Trinidad and Tobago’s prime minister at the time, Arthur N.R. Robinson, had called for greater regional cooperation during annual summit deliberations in Grenada.

The Grand Anse Declaration, as the proposal came to be known, was the blueprint for the Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME) that current Trinidad and Togabo Prime Minister and Caricom Chair Patrick Manning said must be achieved by 2008. The CSME will allow for the free travel of goods, services, skills and labour across the region.

While the Bahamas has made clear from the start that it was not interested in being part of the common market, the situation regarding Haiti’s continued involvement in the 15-member Caricom was also of concern to the leaders.

“It is my fervent hope that with the holding of free and fair elections in Haiti next month, a government which passes the litmus test of democracy and is prepared to honour the tenets contained in the Caricom Charter of Civil Society, will be able to resume its rightful place at our conference table and eventually accede to the rights and obligations of the CSME,” said Patterson.

The interim administration in Haiti has recently made overtures to Caricom to reverse its decision to suspend the nation from their deliberations following the controversial departure of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from office in 2004.

But at least publicly, the two states most opposed to Haiti’s return to the fold, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and St. Lucia, continue to maintain their position.

“Holding an election on a particular date doesn’t mean that it is free and fair. Haiti is not on Mars, it is just around the corner where people go all the time and make reports,” said St. Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves.

His St. Lucian counterpart, Kenny Anthony, made it clear that Castries would not be part of any Caribbean delegation going to Port-Au-Prince on a fact-finding mission at the invitation of interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue.

Meanwhile, Manning urged his regional colleagues that they “must not fail to meet the deadline of 2006 for the CSME”.

“Our region must become internationally competitive,” he said, a position that Patterson and many of the regional leaders, including Barbados Prime Minister Owen Arthur, who has lead responsibility for the CSME, also echoed.

“The CSME represents the most effective means by which the individual economies of our region can be successfully integrated into the evolving global economic system on terms that will enable us to minimise the costs and dislocation that ensue from that integration, while maximising the potential benefits,” Arthur said.

But the small size of the combined regional space and the openness of its economy may also prove to be a stumbling block to meaningful regional unity at this level.

While the so-called more developed countries within Caricom – Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Belize, Suriname and Guyana – were inking the CSM accord Tuesday, for the smaller members of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States, signing on the dotted line was not something they were prepared to do without reservation.

The OECS countries have a combined population of 600,000 and a total 2004 Gross Domestic Product of 8.8 billion dollars. But over the years, natural disasters have taken a toll. In 2004, Grenada alone suffered damages to the tune of 900 million dollars – twice its annual income – after Hurricane Ivan battered the island.

Among their concerns is the establishment of the Regional Development Fund (RDF), which the smaller islands view as “quintessential to a success of the CSME”.

“It is important for the disadvantaged countries, and so it is critical if we are to move forward in terms of preparing for the transition and transformation of those economies and sectors that would have become disadvantaged in accessing membership of the CSME, that the funds be there to help us through that period, ” said St. Kitts-Nevis Prime Minister Denzil Douglas, who chaired the meeting at which the RDF was discussed.

Last month, Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados pledged 12 million dollars to the fund, and Douglas said that Jamaica had also made an undisclosed pledge during the meeting on Tuesday. Initial estimates suggested that the fund will require a pool of more than 200 million dollars.

“We believe, however, that it is important to start with these initial amounts and more in order to create what we call the platform for this fund to be established, so that we can go out to other possible donors asking for other assistance in moving this initiative forward,” Douglas said.