Barbados and CSME 'readiness'
By Rickey Singh
Guyana Chronicle
March 14, 2004
(The following is published, courtesy Weekend Nation of Barbados as appeared in Rickey Singh's `Our Caribbean’ column):
"TODAY SHOULD have marked the conclusion of the two-day Third Special Consultation on the Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME) that was scheduled for March 11-12 at the Sherbourne Conference Centre.
However, as happened in October last year, it was cancelled by Barbados and there is yet to be an official public explanation by either the Caribbean Community Secretariat or the Barbados Government why this important regional event had to be postponed for a second time within six months.
It is easy to assume that the prevailing climate, poisoned to some extent by aggressive nationalistic posturings, is not conducive to any serious consultative process to advance the arrangements for the CSME. Especially in view of the tension in relations between Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago, the two strongest economies of CARICOM. But is there more in the mortar than the pestle?
The Prime Minister of Barbados, Owen Arthur, who has had, for a long time now, lead responsibility for advancing CSME-readiness, found it necessary last week to caution a group of Barbadian business leaders about a mission to Trinidad and Tobago, designed they said, to remove misunderstandings and help keep on a positive track efforts at bilateral relations and enhance the CSME process.
That mission has since taken place, better advised, I assume, following the meeting with Prime Minister Arthur. And in both Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago a released joint statement said issues involving trade and investment were discussed.
Further, that the region's private sector should share the blame for the "slow pace" of CSME-readiness and that the private sector representatives who met in Port-of-Spain on Tuesday reaffirmed their commitment to the CSME.
Of related significance is that just a few weeks earlier, a Regional Think-Tank on Options for Governance that also met in Trinidad - ahead of the Community Secretariat's preparation for the Inter-Sessional Meeting of CARICOM Heads of Government in St. Kitts later this month -highlighted the "slow pace" syndrome in implementing Community decisions, and warned of the implications for economic integration.
Had the postponed Third CSME Consultation taken place this week, we may have been in a better position to assess the real extent of "progress" achieved under Mr. Arthur's watch on CSME-readiness, particularly after he was facilitated by the mechanism of a Prime Ministerial Sub-committee and with a CSME Unit of the Community Secretariat functioning here in Barbados.
I do not share the thinking that Mr. Arthur has lost his once profound enthusiasm in carrying out portfolio responsibility for the CSME - assigned to a member state and pursued by whoever happens to be Prime Minister, Erskine Sandiford having previously shouldered that responsibility.
It is, nevertheless, difficult to ignore some of the questions and comments within organs of the Community about a perceived official mood change in Barbados on some major CARICOM issues. That is, against the background of postponements of a few important regional events, including governance issues at the highest level, that were originally expected to be hosted by the Arthur administration.
It now seems highly unlikely that the forthcoming Inter-Sessional Meeting of CARICOM leaders would have anything of much significance to discuss on "CSME-readiness", or on "options for governance" for which a Prime Ministerial Working Group has had but one full meeting since its establishment over a year ago in Port-of-Spain.