Unless, however, the Community's leaders are prepared to devote more time on this crucial issue than was reported to have been the case during last week's series of meetings of ministers and technocrats in Georgetown, organised by the CARICOM Secretariat, it would be surprising to learn of any significant progress to advance the project for regional economic stabilisation and transformation.

That project flowed from the special CARICOM Summit in St. Lucia last August as a direct outcome of the 23rd annual Community Summit in Guyana the previous month. Since then, while a task force on this regional project was meeting to prepare a report for this week's Port-of-Spain meeting by CARICOM leaders, the economic climate became even more gloomy by a combination of factors.

These would include the still lingering political crisis in our border neighbour, Venezuela, and the seemingly inevitable war against Iraq - a war which we fervently hope could yet be avoided.

Further, as if to add to our region's burden by the loss of its vital preferential treatment for banana exports to Europe, there is now the threatened loss of existing special concessions for Caribbean sugar exports as provided for by the EU sugar regime. This problem has resulted from the complaints to the World Trade Organisation by Brazil and Australia that the EU's sugar regime was unfair to them.

Banana and sugar production constitute more than vital foreign exchange earners for Caribbean economies. As vital sectors of the region's agricultural economy, they are also major sources of employment.

A twin loss?
A twin loss of preferences in the agricultural sector at a time when the region is facing rising fuel cost that could further escalate by a war against Iraq, makes all the more essential for concentrated focus by CARICOM governments and private sector organisations on what needs to be done to stabilise and transform Caribbean economies.

The President of the Caribbean Development Bank, Dr Compton Bourne, made a very important observation in Barbados last Friday at a media briefing at which he discussed the performance of the bank during 2002 and gave an overview of the state of regional economies.

"Caribbean economies", he aid, "must be restructured and better equipped for successful engagement with the open, competitive global economy of the 21st century...

"Considerable attention has to be devoted to identifying potential high growth industries and the particular actions to be taken for improving productivity and international competitiveness".

It is not the first time Bourne has expressed such a concern, and implicit in last week's statement to the media is an awareness that the region needs to be more pro-active and purposeful in preparing for the challenges ahead.

The CDB has a critical role to play, along with the region's Central Banks and private sector agencies in helping to bring about the "restructuring" and "competitiveness" Dr. Bourne has alluded to. Much would depend on the priority given by CARICOM leaders.

They may perhaps consider at their Inter-Sessional Meeting the necessity to expand on work done by the task force that was established to follow through on their Castries decision on stabilisation and transformation of Caribbean economies, by moving to create a think-tank of the best minds available to the region.