by TONY BEST

CREATE a new enterprise culture, a determined effort by the richer Caribbean nations to help their poorer neighbours and a boost to risk-taking.

Then add the movement of skilled and much needed human resources, reform of domestic business environments and the integration of Haiti to the mix and what emerges are the crucial elements needed for the success of the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME).

That was the blueprint outlined yesterday at the Library of the United States Congress by Prime Minister Owen Arthur, to a crowded room that included prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Patrick Manning, in a wide-ranging lecture that traced the history of the integration movement and pinpointed the steps which must be taken if the CSME is to live up to its timetable.

"The creation of the CSME is a huge undertaking that is, at this stage, largely a work in progress," he said.

"The perfection of its design and the successful implementation of its essential aspects will require the sustained engagement of all sections of the civil society, the private sector and the political directorate of the region for many years to come.

"Its success or failure will depend in large measure on how the region resolves some key strategic matters."

For instance, "fundamental issues of regional governance" must be tackled, he insisted.

Economic integration

"The Caribbean Community, in seeking to carry out a process of economic integration that effectively amounts to the creation of an economic union, has chosen a form of political integration whereby it has established itself as a community of sovereign states," he added.

"Each participating state exercises sovereignty and discretion over the implementation of decisions reached at the regional level. There has been no provision for the conferment of executive authority to supranational bodies to carry out decision pertaining to the creation of a regional economy."

That approach was much too limiting, hence the need for "the devolution of executive authority to supranational bodies" in the region, he insisted.

"Proposals to that effect are now before the leadership of the region in the form of a task force report on regional governance. Its adoption is critical," Arthur stressed.

Next is the need for a regional programme of "functional co-operation across all social, cultural and environmental fields" that would be developed and implemented in order to provide "the social and institutional capital" for the CSME.

According to Arthur, the region also needs to implement a system of "special and differential treatment" for the smaller economies.

"Without a proactive engagement of this kind contemplated, the benefits from deeper economic co-operation will ensue in increasing proportion to those states like Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados that begin the process at a higher level of development," he explained.