by RICKEY SINGH

SO, HOW MUCH PROGRESS has really been achieved by the member governments of the Caribbean Community to transform it into a fully integrated CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME) by a much revised target date of 2015?

A better understanding, if not a precise answer, should be forthcoming by tomorrow before the curtains are drawn on a two-day "CSME Convocation" that gets under way this morning at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre, Two Mile Hill, St Michael.

CARICOM is in its 36th year as a regional economic integration movement, inaugurated at Chaguaramas, Trinidad and Tobago, in July 1973. It was 16 years later, at the pathfinding CARICOM Summit of July 1989 in Grenada, that ideas and strategies unfolded in the form of a Grand Anse Declaration for the creation of a seamless regional economy with the CSME.

It was to take a further 17 years before arrangements were completed to make the single market component a reality, starting with the historic Mona Declaration in Jamaica in January 2006.

Since then, and despite having the benefit of clear guidelines to guide implementation efforts for the realisation of a "single economy and a single developoment vision" with the CSME, it has become discouragingly evident that CARICOM is on a "slow march" towards the realisation of its flagship project.

The two-day CSME Convocation, organised by the CARICOM Secretariat in cooperation with the host Barbados Government, has as its primary focus an "audit of the status of implementation" measures - legislative and otherwise - by the participating member governments in the CSME project.

But the audit report, as I understand it, is a voluminous document of some 700 pages, chock-full of raw data, and a summary has been prepared to facilitate deliberations. This, however, is not regarded as offering a critical assessment of the way forward for the CSME.

Sensitive issues, such as legal arrangements on regional economic investment and a relevant governance mechanism to drive the implementation process forward, would be among questions to be raised during the event being chaired by Prime Minister David Thompson, who has lead responsibility for CSME-readiness arrangements.

Participation itself may evolve as an issue among stakeholders' representatives, dominated by member governments, and including the region's umbrella private sector and labour movement organisations, as well as some from civil society agencies.

As earlier learnt, the intention is for the Convocation to be an "open forum", at least for half a day, to benefit from candid, structured interventions, as has been the experiences at previous events of this nature - in Barbados and elsewhere.

At the time of writing, it was disclosed that confirmation had been received from five heads of government of the 15-member Community but that there remained "concerns" over lack of responses from oppostion parliamentary parties. It was not, however, clear whether those parties were invited as participants or observers.