(Jamaica Observer) President of the Private Sector Organisation Jamaica (PSOJ) William Mahfood has described the Caribbean Community (Caricom) as a talk shop, citing that the agreement has failed to provide the intended free trade and openness between member states over the last 20 years.
“I have spoken with the private sector in Trinidad and said to them, ‘how can we as joint private sector come together to really allow Caricom to be what it was intended, because it has now become a talk shop?’” Mahfood told this week’s Jamaica Observer Monday Exchange.
“The heads of Government go off to wherever it is, and over the last 20 years that I’ve looked at it; hardly anything has been accomplished out of Caricom. We have a single form for immigration now. But what else has happened?” he said. Mahfood’s discourse follows a commitment by the Government of Canada to partner with Caricom to the tune of CDN$15 million, through the Canadian-funded Caricom Trade and Competitiveness Project, to implement new, and in some cases, extensive reforms of existing legislation, regulations, and associated procedural and administrative arrangements to operationalise the Caribbean Single Market Economy (CSME). The revised Treaty of the Caribbean Community aims to improve standards of living and work; full employment of labour and other factors of production; expansion of trade and economic relations with third states; enhanced levels of international competitiveness; enhanced co-ordination of member states’ foreign and economic policies; enhanced functional co-operation, among others.
