THE STAGE SEEMS SET for CARICOM heads of government to take key decisions today.

The leaders will meet for a scheduled retreat session at one of Barbados' famous holiday resorts on its south eastern coast – The Crane.

In that very secluded location the community leaders, dressed informally, will seek to arrive at implementation decisions on critical economic and social development issues, including crime and security, before resuming their final day of summitry politics tomorrow at the new, posh Hilton Barbados.

The traditional format for a normal full-day retreat is for the heads of government alone to attend, plus one of their chosen colleagues, often a cabinet minister.

On the card for likely positive decisions will be a scheduled inauguration for next month of the CARICOM Development Fund (CDF) as an essential mechanism to help the "disadvantaged economies" within the
15-member community.

Informed conference sources have told the DAILY NATION that problems of mobilising financial resources to launch the fund with an initial US$250 million, through a mix of regional and foreign contributions, have been largely overcome.

Also set to be resolved is the location of the fund within the operations of the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) which has played a major role in its preparation. This approach is favoured by some leading regional technocrats and foreign donors.

Coming to terms with the need for a common policy on sea and air transportation, with
wider shareholder participation in LIAT being a critical dimension, is also a major issue for today's retreat.

The intention is to broaden the scope to encourage more countries to become actively involved in segments of the community's functional cooperation mandate, The Bahamas for example,
in pursuit of the
creation of a single CARICOM airline with private and public sector ownership.

Another major issue for today's retreat will be the endorsement called for at Sunday's ceremonial opening of the four-day summit by host Prime Minister Owen Arthur – the path-finding
report authored by Professor Norman
Girvan on Towards A Single Economy And A Single Development Vision.

According to at least three heads of government and two regional technocrats, a caveat for successful implementation of the well laid-out approaches for attaining the single economy with a common development vision would be the willingness of the region's political directorate to settle the long outstanding issue of a new governance architecture for the community.