Support CSME advances

FOREIGN and Caricom Affairs Minister Sean Sobers plans consultations before implementing the upgrade of free movement under the Caricom Single Market and Economy (CSME) agreed to at the recent Caricom heads of government meeting in Jamaica.

Setting aside the PM's unusual choice not to personally represent the interests of her new government at this critical regional meeting of her peers and choosing novice ministers – Mr Sobers and Homeland Security Minister Roger Alexander – as her representatives, the government should not be seen to be hesitating about improving the CSME. Caricom leaders would not be out of place to consider Mrs Persad-Bissessar’s absence at the meeting a snub, so taking decisive action to support and implement the expansion of the CSME regime would be sensible.

The global trend toward trade isolation, freedom of movement restrictions, including sharp rises in the cost of visas and the tariff-driven broadsides of the US, should have clearly signalled the value of building greater unity in trade and freedom of movement between the islands of the Caribbean.

It was 36 years ago that the Grand Anse Declaration was signed in Grenada, but regional trade integration dates back to the Caribbean Free Trade agreement which collapsed quickly in 1965 during the early years of Caribbean independence movements after being signed into effect with great hopes. It’s not the first time that there’s been an effort to revive the spirit of the CSME. The Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas was signed in 2001 with the singular ambition of reviving the spirit of the regional single market economy.

A special summit was held in TT in 2018 to again revive the CSME but by 2022, this country had only managed to amend its laws to fully support the movement of skilled workers.

Efforts to more meaningfully bring the CSME into practical service have been hallmarked by grand talk at summits followed by a fallback to insularity and bureaucratic hesitation to actually put the principles into practice.

The region has a greater motivator to bind itself together more effectively into an economic bloc than ever before.

The continuing reversal of globalisation initiatives, the US commitment to expel non-citizens, and blunt-force efforts to close US universities to foreign students deemed undesirable by sketchy yardsticks inexorably point to the need for the Caribbean to strengthen its existing assets, harness its human resource and become more self-sufficient and market ready than it has needed to before now.

The initiative at this month’s heads of government meeting got a boost by the decision to create a free movement zone between Barbados, Belize, Dominica and St Vincent and the Grenadines.

TT, as a responsible member of Caricom, should become part of that project, setting a tone of leadership in the CSME agenda.