By Sir Ronald Sanders
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, Thursday
December 27, 2012 - The curtain rolls down on 2012 with the Caribbean Community
and Common Market (CARICOM) institutionally weak and its 15 member governments
doing little more than paying lip service to the process of economic
integration.
It seems that the only reason that
several governments do not declare CARICOM irrelevant and walk away from it is
that they dare not. To do so, they would
have to explain their action to their people.
It is a discussion few government leaders would relish.
One of the things they could not say
is that CARICOM – as an integration instrument - is a drag on their development
or a hindrance to their prospects. In
recent years, Governments have simply opted not to utilise the benefits of regional
arrangements, preferring instead to pursue separate deals in the hope that such
deals would allow them to maintain national power.
Just a few weeks ago at the opening
of a meeting of CARICOM Trade Ministers, the Deputy Secretary-General of
CARICOM felt constrained to say: “While as individual sovereign States we would
be preoccupied with the responsibilities within our national borders, it would
also be to our advantage to look to our regional arrangements as supportive
even when they seem to add additional responsibilities”. That Lolita Applewhaite found it necessary to
make this statement is indicative of concern over the failure of governments to
seek a solution to their current grave economic problems through CARICOM’s
integration machinery.
It is not as if the economic
conditions in the majority of CARICOM countries are good. Barbados and the six independent countries of
the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) have dangerously high debt
to GDP ratios of over 65 percent and some are well over 100 per cent. Jamaica’s economy has been in dire straits
for years and there appears little hope of a dramatic improvement anytime
soon.
Indeed, many of these countries are
already failed states, surviving only by grants and assistance given to them by
external agencies.
As 2013 dawns, apart from Trinidad
and Tobago, Guyana and Suriname, the prospects for the national economies of
CARICOM states are bleak. None of the 12 other CARICOM members has the means to
provide the financial stimulus to grow their economies and stem the rate of
unemployment which is expanding and will get worse in 2013.
It is not a convincing argument for
CARICOM governments to constantly point to the global economic situation as the
principal cause for their countries’ economic decline. Many of them were already on a slippery slope
before 2009 when the financial crisis began to bite. Further, other countries in Africa, Asia and
Latin America have done well despite being subject to the same global
crisis. Economic growth in many of these
countries has exceeded 7 per cent at the same time that the economies of the
majority of CARICOM countries shrunk.
Making matters worse, with the
exceptions of Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago, CARICOM countries have become
reliant on Hugo Chavez - Venezuela’s President - for deferred payment for their
oil needs under the Petro Caribe scheme.
With President Chavez’s illness casting grave doubt over his ability to
continue to lead Venezuela, even if he manages to be sworn-in as President on
January 10, the likelihood of continuing benefits under Petro Caribe is not at
all certain.
To add to this troubling scenario,
the Caribbean Development Bank – long respected internationally and trusted
with funds from international financial institutions and donor governments for
on-lending to CARICOM states – was downgraded twice in 2012 by Standard &
Poor’s, dragged there by the failure of borrowing governments to repay
loans.
Then there is the EU which has been a
generous aid donor to CARICOM countries for over three decades. Faced with its own debt problems among some
of its member states, the EU has introduced austerity measures
domestically. In that situation, it has
announced that upper-middle income developing countries will no longer be
eligible for EU aid. While, so far,
CARICOM countries, as part of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group,
have been shielded from ineligibility by the Cotonou Agreement, there is no
guarantee that this will continue after 2015 when the Agreement is
reviewed. At that time, all but Guyana
(lower middle income) and Haiti (low income) will be adversely affected.
But, aid agencies such as the
Canadian International Development Agency, the British Department for
International Development and the EU complain regularly that while tens of
millions of dollars are available for regional projects on an annual basis,
Governments show little interest in them, opting for national projects for
which many lack the absorptive capacity, including the skills necessary to
submit “bankable” applications.
The question that poses itself is:
Haiti apart, why should a region of 6 million people with vast natural
resources such as oil, gas, diamonds, gold, bauxite, uranium, tourism,
financial services, fisheries, agriculture (including sugar and rice), forestry
and huge potential for renewable energy, be poor and suffering? The answer lies in the failure of our
governments to perfect a single market and to work steadfastly toward a single
economy.
No one pretends that this task is
easy. Secretary-General Irwin LaRocque
has said that: “Many of our member states face constraints both technical and
political which cannot be ignored or easily overcome”. Given the validity of that statement why has
the Secretariat not sought a mandate to establish a team of competent persons
to examine these constraints wherever they exist and to identify practical
measures to deal with them within an agreed time frame? It cannot be sufficient to acknowledge the
problem and yet to take no meaningful action to solve it.
If this backward march continues,
many CARICOM countries will go over the cliff, and eventually CARICOM will be
abandoned by those member countries that can do better by economic and
political arrangements with others. In
particular, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana and Suriname may well find it
beneficial to integrate their own economies more deeply and to jointly pursue
arrangements with Brazil, Venezuela and other Latin American nations.
2013 can be the year of CARICOM’s
final slide to oblivion with disastrous consequences for the majority of its
member states, or it can be the year when leaders recognise the folly of
shunning deeper regional integration and so take positive steps to re-enliven
and deepen CARICOM.
It is down to leadership.
SOURCE: http://www.caribbean360.com
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