In the course of the month of May the Caricom region has been up for scrutiny either by governments or government officials, or by individual commentators and practitioners, and their perspectives have varied over the field from relative optimism to some degree of pessimism.
We have had an announcement from the government of Jamaica, through its Prime Minister Andrew Holness, in effect signalling some concern about the regional integration movement in respect of its benefit to his country, and announcing a Caribbean Community Review Commission, chaired by former Jamaica Prime Minister Bruce Golding, to advise his government.
Secondly, the President of the Caribbean Development Bank, Dr Warren Smith, has been giving his institution’s perspective on the regional economic condition to the institution’s annual meeting of its Board of Governors. And thirdly, we have had a well-known public affairs commentator and government official, Sir Ronald Sanders, of Guyanese origin, and currently Ambassador of Antigua and Barbuda to the United States, giving, we presume in a private capacity, his perspective on the state of regional integration.
Prime Minister Holness has asserted that “the time has come to fully assess the benefits, opportunities and challenges of Caricom to Jamaica” and as mentioned above, in that context has established a Caribbean Community Review Commission led by former Prime Minister Bruce Golding to “evaluate the effects that Jamaica’s participation in Caricom has had on the country’s economic growth and development”, to “ analyse Caricom’s performance against the goals and objectives enunciated in the Revised Treaty of Chaguramas” which many perceive as the integration Bible; and to “assess the value of Jamaica’s membership of Caricom” in the context of the institution’s influence in critical international forums; and finally to examine the extent of the benefits gained by the country through the functional cooperation activities of the organization.
Interesting also in the mandate given, is a request that the Golding Commission review Caricom from the perspective of possible benefits for Jamaica from its participation in a geographically wider regional institution “inclusive of the Dominican Republic and Cuba”.
Those familiar with Jamaica’s geography will be aware that the country, through its location and a consequent historical movement of its people to those two neighbouring non-English-speaking countries, has always tended to have a deeper interest than other Caricom countries in those states. But for some time, of course, the Jamaica Labour Party government, particularly under the leadership of then Prime Minsiter Edward Seaga, had a certain hostility to Cuba, given the character of the regime subsequent to the Castro-led revolution.
In a period now of political and diplomatic evolution of the Cuban regime, and particularly in the context of the changing attitude of the United States to Cuba, what would have seemed a challenge to a Jamaican government in an earlier period, is now perceived as a normal initiative. But perhaps more importantly is what may well now be a perceived beneficial challenge for a government determined to pursue benefits from a closer economic relationship with Cuba in particular, in the context of a persistent effort of economic reorganization in recent years, aimed at making the Jamaican economy more efficient and competitive.
It is in perhaps in that context that, at least in respect of Jamaica, the observations of President Warren Smith of the Caribbean Development Bank are relevant. In his address to the institution’s Board of Governors meeting in Jamaica this month, Smith give a positive perspective on the gruelling efforts that Jamaica has undertaken, in conjunction with the policy advice and supervision of the International Monetary Fund, to position its economy as substantially more efficient than it has been over the last two to three decades.
The import of the President’s comments on the Jamaica experience would also seem to be intended to indicate its relevance to other states-economies in the Region, that country having successfully improved its ranking in the global ‘Doing Business’ Index, through adoption of “a number of structural benchmarks in an effort to improve overall competitiveness”.
In terms of a wider perspective, the CDB President has also sought to advise the Region on the limitations on economic growth created by the relatively few economic sectors in which countries are still involved, and particularly in respect of a continually non-diversified agriculture. As he put it to the Bank Governors, “Agriculture is the main employer in many Caribbean countries, accounting for approximately 16% of overall employment in the region. However, much of the non-tradition agriculture sector remains low value-adding, low tech, low productivity, and inefficient” – a familiar lament reminiscent of the critiques of the New World university economists at the University of the West Indies Jamaica campus, in the mid-1960s.
The relative optimism of the bank President, though also on the basis of a degree of realism about continuing challenges, contrasts with the views given to the representatives of the St Lucia tourism industry by Ambassador Sanders last week. His remarks had the aura of a determined pessimism concerning prospects for persistent economic growth in a domestic context of continued high debt, and in a wider context of uncertainty about the imminent direction of United States policy; as well as uncertainty in the European Union sphere, particularly with the apparent indecisiveness and divisiveness of the British population vis-à-vis continued membership of that grouping.
But the main charge that Sanders makes is not so much about the Caricom states’ reactions to uncertainty in the wider world, but rather their unwillingness to act, in his view, in a persistent direction as far as Caricom integration is concerned. Yet, his arguments almost suggest that Caricom governments are actually almost unaware, not so much of the changes going on in the global arena, but rather the severity of their implications for a meaningful survival of their states.
Sanders seems to suggest that his fundamental point of reference is the West Indian Commission Report, and its indication of a desire to link the Caricom system , as a coherent economic and geopolitical grouping, in a systematic manner with the non-English speaking countries, while not seeking political unification. He remarks on Jamaican plans to forge, in respect of tourism, “a Multi-Destination Arrangement between itself, Cuba and the DR”, a stratagem for coping with “the lifting of the US embargo against Cuba”.
Sanders’ observations would also seem to suggest the necessity to anticipate the changes that could take place following the rapprochement between Cuba and the United States. And a reader might well feel that his concern has anticipated the decision of the Jamaican authorities to ask Bruce Golding to explore all the possible avenues – including those, we might suggest, with implications for the coherence of Caricom.
