The formal launch of the CARICOM Single Market in Kingston, Jamaica today will signal a new beginning for CARICOM countries as the region seeks to create a shared market space to secure its survival within the global sphere, according to officials of the CARICOM Secretariat.
CARICOM Secretary General Edwin Carrington described the launch of the Single Market as an historic and unprecedented step in the regional integration process, and a new dimension that will change the way the people of the region live and work.
Mr. Carrington noted that the Single Market would “transform, safeguard and advance the future of our region and its people in this globalised world.”
On January 1, Barbados, Belize, Guyana, Jamaica, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago became the first CARICOM countries to enter into the Single Market.
The remaining member states are expected to join by the end of the first quarter of this year.
Today in Jamaica in a ceremony to be carried ‘live’ via television across the region, the six member states already in the Single Market will sign a declaration formalising their entry while six other member states – Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia and St Vincent and the Grenadines – will sign another declaration stating their intention to join by the end of March.
With respect to the three other member states, The Bahamas has said it will not join the CSME at this time, while Montserrat, a British dependency, awaits the necessary instrument of entrustment from the United Kingdom government in order to participate. Haiti has not completed its accession to the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas and is therefore not a participant in the Single Market.
While acknowledging that there would be challenges along the way, the secretary general expressed optimism over the positive future the Single Market holds for the region, including the likelihood of the Caribbean Diaspora returning to utilise their skills and the retention of university graduates within the region.
General Counsel of the CARICOM Secretariat, Dr. Winston Anderson pointed out that the Revised Treaty defined the legal framework within which nationals of the Single Market participating countries must operate, including the Right of Establishment under which entrepreneurs might acquire land, not for speculation, but exclusively for the establishment of their businesses.
“There are significant safeguards provided for in our treaty arrangements which would make sure that complying with this obligation does not cause any difficulty or problem in our OECS Member States,” he said.
CARICOM’s Assistant Secretary General for Human and Social Development, Dr. Edward Greene alluded to the 2001 Nassau Declaration by CARICOM Heads of Government which declared that the health of the region was the wealth of the region.
He said that declaration underscored the significance that heads of government attached to the region’s health and development within the context of the Single Market.
Dr Greene viewed the free movement of goods, services, capital and persons as an opportunity for CARICOM nationals “to make the Caribbean one market that would work for individuals irrespective of their country of origin.”
Former Dean of the CARICOM Youth Ambassadors Programme, Valerie Lalji posited that youths had a critical role to play in the Single Market. She said that in order to enjoy the full benefits that the Single Market had to offer, youths now had to educate themselves and their peers.
President of the Caribbean Congress of Labour, Lincoln Lewis viewed the Single Market as “a process of attacking poverty in the Caribbean,” which he noted required regional participation from both a political and cultural position.
“We believe that where there is trade there must be an economy to sustain that trade,” he added.
Meanwhile, leader of the Parliamentary Opposition of Guyana and a member of the Committee of Heads of Government and Leaders of Parliamentary Opposition, Robert Corbin, said CARICOM heads of government must be applauded for staying the course started by the founding fathers of regional integration.
“I believe that CARICOM has reached a stage where we can really embark on a road to economic development,” he remarked, adding that the Single Market represented an important step for CARICOM’s survival in a globalised world.
Source: The Bahama Journal
