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The leaders of the 15-nation grouping are either unaware of or choose to ignore the harsh assessment of CARICOM made earlier this year by CARICOM’s elder statesman, former Jamaican Prime Minister P.J. Patterson or repeated cautions about the precarious state of most of the Region’s economies from the President of the Caribbean Development Bank, Dr. Warren Smith.
In January, Patterson told the Rotary club in Georgetown: “Let me make it clear – as of now, some decisive steps are urgently required to rescue CARICOM, or else life support may come too late to prevent coma. Our leaders must take the helm of our regional ship and guide it through the choppy waters of this time.
“None of this will be achieved without a renewal of political commitment; implementation of long outstanding decisions and the design of fresh initiatives that can ignite the imagination and meaningfully engage the interests of our people,” the former Jamaican leader added. Can CARICOM leaders truly say that they have adhered to the sound advice of this CARICOM stalwart? I think not.
Having attended the landmark 1989 CARICOM Summit in Grenada where the famous and ambitious “Grand Anse” Declaration was conceived, having written extensively in the 1980s about the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME ) and the CARICOM Enterprise Regime and served in the early 1990s as the communications consultant with the West Indian Commission that focused on charting new directions for the integration movement, I find it almost unbelieveable that the leaders continue to regurgitate pronouncements on CARICOM issues.
“The conjuncture of the 40th Anniversary of the movement in the place where it began as a robust and visionary response to similar, challenging circumstances offered a golden opportunity for a real and a psychological lift through a few bold visionary initiatives requiring the combined effort of leaders and people to begin to pull our Region back from the real prospect of decolonisation by one or another ‘economic benefactor’. The communiqué is devoid of any such motivational or even specific action piece,” former CARICOM Assistant Secretary-General Byron Blake said in an invited comment.
Among the decisions taken by the CARICOM leaders is to give immediate consideration to “the design and communication of a resource mobilisation strategy to facilitate targeted interventions by governments to catalyse and ignite growth in CARICOM states.” What exactly does this entail?
Yet another decision was the “adoption of a stabilization and growth agenda” which focuses on the removal of constraints on competitive production and “support for the private sector aimed at catalyzing growth in critical economic sectors”.
Blake, who is a former senior adviser to the President of the U.N. General Assembly, said it might well be because of the language in which it is written, but if these are the key immediate actions to “deepen the regional framework for growth and development”, the Region is in real difficulty.
“There is neither strategy nor agenda. The strategy for resource mobilisation is to be designed under the direction of the Prime Minister of Barbados and then will be given ‘immediate consideration’ by Heads of Government.
The next time the Heads will meet on CARICOM matters will be in St Vincent and the Grenadines late January or early February 2014,” the Jamaican economist noted.
Another well-known Caribbean Affairs Specialist, Trinidadian Dr. Anthony Peter Gonzales has also lamented the lack of progress in addressing the crisis facing the regional integration movement.
“The trend of muddling through as we have seen over the past five years remains dominant,” Gonzales, remarked, adding that there are widening conflicts within CARICOM. He also observed the entry of CARICOM countries into the South American regional groupings MERCOSUR and UNASUR. Guyana’s President Donald Ramotar has insisted that Guyana’s pursuit of closer ties with South America does not mean it is diluting its relations with CARICOM, but pursuing strategies to widen trade and investment relations with its neighbours.
“There is no progress on the reform of the Secretariat, which is at the heart of all further progress in CARICOM. No fundamental decisions would be made until this is finalised. Most, if not all, of the decisions are about planning and studying further the items of the agenda,” Gonzales said.
Like Blake, Gonzales, who has served as Director of the Institute of International Relations (IIR) at the University of the West Indies in Trinidad, is not optimistic that CARICOM member states will be able to mobilise additional resources. “I am not sure what added value there is as over the last five years CARICOM has been approaching all its international partners in search of funding for stabilisation and development. It is not clear how many more partners there are to offer additional resources given the state of things in the world.”
Gonzales said the work of various committees and working groups on the key agenda items means that the issues are on the table and hopefully the results of these efforts will be revealed in the near future.
SINGLE DOMESTIC SPACE
One encouraging development arising out of the Trinidad summit is the decision to re-introduce the Single Domestic Space (SDS) to facilitate hassle-free travel for visitors going from one country to another in the Region. Hopefully, this will be in effect before the end of 2013. It was the Caribbean Tourism Organisation’s Aviation Task Force that was the catalyst for action on facilitating hassle-free travel.
The CTO Task Force earlier this year recommended steps to address, among other things, one-stop passenger and baggage security-screening arrangements, entry visa restrictions, poor quality of some airport facilities, weak customer focus and lack of code shares and interline arrangements.
In a recent address in Barbados on the topic “In Search of Solutions to the Challenges of Regional Air Transportation in the Caribbean” Chairman of LIAT, Jean Holder identified the following as some of the well known challenges and criticisms: poor on-time performance and unreliable service; loss or delay of baggage; unsatisfactory customer service, which includes poor communication with passengers when things go wrong, high air fares for short distances, exacerbated by high taxes added to the fares.
Holder also cited as thorny issues lack of competition, seen as responsible for the high fares; frequent losses by the companies and the need for government subsidies; lack of communication between the individual carriers and presumed inefficient management, often blamed on the fact that the airlines are owned by governments and not the private sector.
The Bureau of the Heads of Government has been mandated to deal with a number of issues in the regional transportation sector. Though no timeframe has been set for this, hopefully, this will be addressed with some action areas identified before the end of the year.
The call from the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association (CHTA) for a CARICOM Summit on Tourism should be treated with some urgency given the challenges facing many tourism-dependent economies. The Barbados economy is in a slump, with dwindling foreign reserves in the last quarter. Total long-stay arrivals fell by seven per cent during the first six months of 2013, compared to the same period last year, including a double-digit dip in arrivals from the United States market.
Several CARICOM member states have called for greater engagement by Trinidad and Tobago in the integration movement. As well, there have been repeated calls for concrete steps to be taken to address that country’s sizeable trade imbalance with other countries and persistent non-tariff barriers that shut out specific Jamaican, Barbadian and Grenadian products.
With so many pending issues, including the slow pace of governance reforms and a range of protracted transportation problems, against the backdrop of struggling CARICOM economies, the call by Trinidadian leader Kamla Persad Bissessar to give the green light for membership to The Dominican Republic is one proposal that should be put on the backburner.
At the top of the CARICOM agenda should be improved and regular communication from the Chairman and CARICOM Bureau and beginning with the Secretary General’s Office.
(Sandra Ann Baptiste is a Business Consultant and Specialist in Caribbean Affairs).
