The Caribbean Single Market & Economy (CSME) may be functioning, but there are still quite a few imperfections that need to be ironed out, says a top CARICOM official.
Programme manager at the CARICOM Secretariat’s CSME Unit, Ivor Carryl, told a meeting of stakeholders yesterday at Grand Barbados that the CSME was still grappling with the free movement of labour within the territories, a cultural gap and some countries’ reluctance to do business outside of their own territories.
“We have to deal with the free movement of skills. What drives an economy is its people, and free movement is a pivotal driver of the economy,” he noted.
Carryl also hammered home the point that there was a need to open up the “market space” so that people could work freely in other territories instead of honing their skills and taking them to countries outside of the CSME territories.
He said it was sad that every country in the CSME framework did not have a registrar in place for their service providers, which would enable those hoping to work in other countries to do so without any inconvenience.
But these were only a few of the issues mentioned yesterday. Carryl also told the stakeholders that proper economic integration called for a high level of political commitment on the part of the participating countries.
In addressing the consultancy on the results of the CSME study, Carryl noted that the ultimate goal was to increase the standard of living for the people in Caribbean communities, but he also lamented the fact that there was still need for a common platform.
“We need one common platform. Solving these problems is not going to be easy, but they are important when we answer the question [of] what was the original call of the CSME,” he noted.
He noted some parts of the region could be more comprehensively explored, since there were numerous opportunities for investors in countries such as Belize, Suriname and Guyana, which were being under utilised.
Carryl said that in an effort to have everything working smoothly the CSME had put certain collective institutions in place to try to iron out some of the problems being experienced.
He noted there had been the setting up of a regional court that would address matters of congress, and the creation of a single body to regulate competition in the marketplaces.
The programme manager said there had also been islands that were not allowing the free trade of fruits and vegetables for fear of “certain diseases coming into their islands” and, as such, the Animal Health and Food Safety Commission had been implemented to deal with such issues.
