Letter from... the Caribbean

Rory Rostant reports from Trinidad

Like other trading blocks that preceded it - the European Union, Mercusor and even NAFTA - the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) is trying hard to carve a niche for itself, ditching old stereotypes that no longer have currency in today’s fierce global arena.

By 2008, when the Caribbean Single Market (CSM) is completed, the hope is that all CARICOM nationals will be able to work and travel in member countries.

It also means that companies can trade “without additional tariffs or other types of discriminatory charges”, according to the CSM website. At present, only certain categories of professionals - journalists, university graduates, entertainers, doctors and sportspersons - are able to work in participating member countries.

Soon, construction, plumbing and electrical engineering will be added to the growing skills pot.

Regional exporters of goods already enjoy duty-free access throughout CARICOM, but the new agreement will enable the free movement of capital, services and skilled workers to move more easily throughout the region. CSM has also triggered the trade arbitration role of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), where regional trade issues will be decided.

The idea of the CSM was first floated in 1989, but it has taken nearly 17 years to get to this point. Sadly, as of 1 January, only Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago, Barbados, Belize, Guyana and Suriname have signed the CSM document in its entirety.

At the official launch of the CSM in early February in Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago’s Prime Minister, Patrick Manning, noted that the region still has some distance to go to complete that single economic space which, he stressed, was so vital to the viability of these nations in a fiercely global competitive arena. “Our survival,” he told Caribbean leaders, “depends on our growing togetherness.”

In making a case for harmonising and co-ordinating their economic policies, interest rates, laws and tax regimes, Manning said the region would be able to enter smoothly and effectively into trading arrangements with other countries, thereby ensuring increased inflows of new capital for the region’s development.

To help jumpstart the CSM among smaller states, particularly the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) - Antigua, Dominica, Grenada, St Kitts, St Lucia and St Vincent - regional leaders help set up a US$12m Regional Development Fund (RDF) to provide technical and financial assistance.

The OECS has since back-pedalled on the CSM agreement, saying it had some concerns about the timetable set by CARICOM for implementation, and is now looking at the end of June. Bahamas, too, has indicated that it is not interested in the CSM, arguing that free movement of labour would overrun its workforce.

St Lucia Prime Minister, Dr Kenny Anthony, raised the spectre of the CSM becoming an elitist entity, warning about the anxiety - particularly in small territories - about its impact.

Most of this fear, he said, resides in the unemployed, the marginalised and the ordinary wage earner. If the working class perceives the CSM as a threat - that it cannot improve their lives - then they will have no commitment to it, and embrace xenophobia, he warned.

Hayden Blades, senior economist at RBTT, a leading financial giant, argues that CSM provides an opportunity for accelerated bottom-up and broad-based economic development across the region. He takes the view that it is through the movement and interaction of budding entrepreneurs and small and medium-sized enterprises that the greatest benefits will be derived. Without the explicit support of the Caribbean people, further advancement will be stymied, he states.

Scotiabank managing director, Richard Young, said he was unsure how companies with foreign exchange restrictions would operate under CSM. He makes the point that there are countries in which there are no restrictions, but where it is hard to move capital because of weaknesses inherent in their economies. It is on the ground that CSM’s impact will be felt.

Paul Quesnel, President of the Trinidad & Tobago Manufacturing Association, believes the CSM, with its free movement of labour, should allow local companies to target workers from other islands: Trinidad & Tobago, an energy titan, is now in the middle of a building boom where labour is stretched thin and attendant costs are rising.

The proof is in the pudding. So far, the CSM unit in Trinidad has approved skills certificates for 191 Jamaicans and 114 Guyanese to work in the country. That’s just from the 2,000 applications that have already come in.

“We are treating with every application. We are not turning anybody back,” said Herman Browne, chief immigration officer in Port of Spain. If only others were so open-minded.

Rory Rostant is a business editor at Newsday in Trinidad.