Saddled with huge international debt payments, high incidence of unemployment, alarming levels of crime, and declining flows in development aid, CARICOM states, from the newest and poorest, Haiti, to once thriving economies like Barbados, are grappling for solutions to threatening social and economic problems.

It seems that the oft-repeated warnings of the decade of the 1990s by CARICOM leaders that as a Community of independent sovereign states "we either swim together or drown separately", has assumed greater relevance in this first decade of the 21st century.

The problems are particularly acute for member countries of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) and more specifically Dominica, which in a state of financial crisis, is experiencing difficulties to honour debt payments at home and abroad.

CARICOM heads of government -- three of whom are facing new general elections in Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and Barbados -- have chosen to demonstrate their awareness of the need for urgent and consensual response to the economic challenges by holding a special one-day summit on Friday, August 16 in St. Lucia.

The 'Castries Summit' is a direct outcome of the CARICOM leaders' deliberations on the "State of the Community" when they met in Georgetown last month for their 23rd regular annual Conference.

To facilitate their work for the special summit, they appointed a technical committee with the President of the Caribbean Development Bank, the Governor of the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank and the Community being key participants, to develop with urgency a set of proposals, including the creation of a Regional Stabilisation Fund.

The President of the CDB, Dr Compton Bourne, who, like the ECCB Governor, Sir Dwight Venner, made special presentations on the economic issues of our time at the Georgetown Summit, has already spoken of the need for a "special financing mechanism for avoiding economic polarisation".

He sees that full realisation of a CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME) is "a critical requirement for international competitiveness and resuscitation of economic growth".

But he has warned against the establishment of what some want in the form of a CSME "adjustment fund", separate from the larger financial resource requirements for economic reconstruction in all member states of the Community.

SUMMIT HOST: Prime Minister Dr. Kenny Anthony of St. Lucia
While a sub-regional stabilisation fund may seem attractive in the short-term to help, for instance immediate pressing needs of some OECS countries, Bourne feels that it is to the larger challenge of region-wide economic reconstruction to which the international financial institutions and donors will more likely pay attention.

Having been provided with an overview of economic performances and prospects from their own and regional technocrats, the CARICOM leaders would be expected to be more sensitive to some of the concerns about public sector management issues that have been highlighted by the crisis situation of a number of national economies.

Among such concerns, as the CDB President has reminded, are the quality of governance, transparency and information availability or accountability. They cannot afford to ignore issues as timely presentation of audited accounts, proper operation of public procurement systems and accuracy of public data.

To ensure proper fiscal management in the public sector, the Monetary Council in the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union is already engaged in an initiative, being implemented by the ECCB, to set standards and guidelines and with management teams in place to ensure their implementation. This is an initiative being recommended for other member countries of CARICOM for proper fiscal management.

In bringing to bear his own years of experience as one of the region's better known economists, Clive Thomas, speaking at a symposium last May organised to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Barbados Central Bank, had pointed to what he termed "the default positions" followed by developing nations, including the Caribbean region, and lamented the lack of resistance to the tendency to globalise policy-making in the various international agencies.

Thomas has made known his own disappointment over a perceived preference for substituting the evolution of CARICOM and the Association of Caribbean States for the broader/deeper integration process of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). And, at the same time, the region's making a case of "special and differential treatment" for small countries in the global economy, yet being "willing to accept its rejection without a great deal of fuss..."

Within recent times, however, more and more CARICOM leaders and technocrats have been signalling warnings against being hurried into reaching agreements on provisions of the FTAA, or in completing arrangements in the new Cotonou Accord between the European Union and the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) states.

Last week, ahead of a forthcoming CARICOM ministerial meeting, possibly in Port-of-Spain, with the United States Trade Representative, the Deputy USTR, Peter Allegier, was expected to visit some Community states, including Barbados, St. Lucia and Jamaica.

The visits are part of a programme by the Bush administration in Washington to push ahead with the FTAA and getting this region to drop demands for "special and differential treatment for small and disadvantaged" economies in the hemisphere.

Jamaica's ambassador, Peter King, special advisor to the Minister of Industry, Commerce and Technology, in sharply criticising the U.S. for "shafting" developing states like Jamaica, was blunt in declaring that 'there is nothing that points to 'special and differential treatment' for smaller economies" in the FTAA process.

For his part, CARICOM current Chairman, President Bharrat Jagdeo of Guyana, was last week knocking the policies of the wealthy industrialised nations of Europe and North America that were further marginalising depressed economies of the Caribbean and other developing nations of the ACP grouping, through subsidisation of their farmers as well as protectionist measures.

In addressing a joint session of Jamaica's Parliament, along with Nigeria's head of state, Olusegun Obasanjo, as part of the country's 40th independence celebration activities, President Jagdeo noted that the international environment was too often "unsympathetic to our cause and condition as small emerging states".

These will be among issues to be considered at Friday's special summit in Castries in the shaping of a collective Caribbean response to global economic challenges.