ADDRESS BY THE RT. HON OWEN ARTHUR, PRIME MINISTER OF BARBADOS, AT THE OPENING OF THE CSME UNIT OFFICE, CENTRAL BANK OF BARBADOS, BRIDGETOWN, BARBADOS

The event which we celebrate this evening will hopefully come to be regarded not so much as a small step in the creation of a Unit, but a giant step in our support of a cause. For it ushers in the formal commencement of the new economic arrangement for our region which hopefully will create for us a future which will be unrecognisable and more prosperous than the past out of which we have emerged.

As the Prime Minister with responsibility for the CARICOM Single Market and Economy it therefore gives me great pleasure to welcome you to Barbados to share in this moment.

Barbados is happy to be able to accommodate this Unit, which will be charged with the awesome responsibility of managing the transformation of the region into a Single economic entity. The location of this unit of the Secretariat here at the Tom Adams Financial Complex will be temporary in nature, but we will ensure that for its duration in Barbados it will have the necessary resources to carry out its tasks efficiently and effectively.

And you must let me make the point that this gesture on the part of the Government of Barbados is not intended to poach regional institutions which are meant to be located elsewhere in the Caribbean.

Rather, it is merely intended to ensure that the necessary energy and urgency are brought to bear in the functioning of critical regional institutions and that we do not fail because of our failure to act.

And it is important that our actions here this afternoon are understood in the context in which they have a real meaning.

In 1989 at Grand Anse, the leaders of the Caribbean determined that the Caribbean economy should be transformed into a Single Market and Single Economy. That was one of the most important decisions in the history of our region.

Throughout its entire history the Caribbean economy has been made up of separate island economies, each competing rather than cooperating with each other for the same markets and investments, and all better linked to metropolitan economies than to each other.

In addition, the 1973 Treaty of Chaguaramas enshrined a very limited form of economic integration for the Caribbean, and certainly did not make provision for the liberalisation of capital flows, the provision of services, the rights of establishment of enterprise, the true building of regional capital markets and the harmonisation of policy in crucial areas.

The decision at Grand Anse in 1989 was thus intended to make good the deficiencies in the original limited conception of Caribbean economic integration, as enshrined in the Original Treaty of Chaguaramas.

It was made urgent because in a world then, as is now characterised by the proliferation of regional economic and trading blocs (over 100), and by a distinct tendency towards the lowering and removal of barriers to trade, the movement of investment, capital, intellectual property, technology and promoting mobility in the location of production internationally, the Caribbean would be the odd man out were an effort not made to create and transform our region into one single, common economic space.

To the extent that the Original Treaty of Chaguaramas did not make provision for such a Single Market and Economy, a legal framework for such an entity first had to be created.

That exercise has now virtually been completed and has resulted in the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas, which now replaces the limited Common Market of 1973 with the Single Market and Single Economy of 2002.

It is important therefore that it be understood, that the design of a Single Market and Economy for our Caribbean Community has been accomplished.

It now falls to us to take those designs and to translate them into action – to make the Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME) not just a legal entity residing in a treaty, but a lived reality that can matter fundamentally to how the Caribbean people live and work and relate to the global economy.

This Unit is being created to carry out the implementation of the provisions of the CSME.   It is being created because we appreciate the importance of not allowing a long lag between design and implementation.

The Region can no longer wait.

And it is against this background, you must allow me to touch on a few issues which I hope will bring some clarity to the public discourse about the CSME.

The first is that the CSME will never appear as a finished or finite entity.  Indeed, the concept of a Single Market and Economy and the economic instruments embodied in the CSME will evolve and will be added to, much in the same way and for the same reasons that the concept and modalities of European Economic Integration have continued to evolve.   That process has already begun with work on new Protocols such as for Government Procurement and E-commerce on which regional approaches and agreements need to be put in place.

Secondly, although there are over one hundred regional trading blocs now in existence, the CSME as an expression of economic integration is surpassed only by the European Union in the depth and extent of the economic integration which it attempts to bring about.

Indeed, the provision made in Protocol 2 for the liberalisation of capital flows, provision of services, rights of establishment of enterprise and the removal of restrictions on the movement of skills and people go way beyond any similar set of provisions to be found in any economic integrating movement in our hemisphere.

We do need to say these things if only because the indigenous stroke that is too often played in the region is that of selling our accomplishments far too short.

Third, I do not share the view that the creation of a CSME is an initiative that has come too late and in too little proportion.

Indeed, by comparison it has taken Europe fully 50 years to transform itself into a Single Economy and that process has not yet been completed in Europe. A similar process has been accomplished in the Caribbean in just over 10 years as regards  to the completion of a legal framework to make a Single Market and Economy possible.

Secondly, once we are prepared to grant ourselves, as we can under international trade law, faster, broader and deeper liberalisation in every economic and financial sphere, than we are prepared to grant extra regional entities, the CSME can continue to be a positive force in Caribbean development long after we have concluded arrangements for a Free Trade Area of the Americas and with Europe under the Cotonou Agreement.

To achieve this, one of the critical strategic tasks that this Unit must achieve is to ensure that our CSME, is implemented in a manner that is WTO plus and FTAA plus – that goes beyond the arrangements for Hemispheric and global liberalisation that we are prepared to agree to.

Fourth, we now have the prospect of creating not just a Single Caribbean Single Market and Economy but of making it immediately a factor that can engender significant growth and dynamism in the regional economy.

I say this because for many years, economic dynamism in the Caribbean has been stymied by the existence of over 360 restrictions on the flow of capital, the provision of services, the movement of skills, and the establishment of enterprise by Caribbean nationals in their region.

The recently agreed programme for the removal of such restrictions contemplates that almost half of such restrictions can be removed within a two year period.

Mr. Secretary General, should this Implementation Unit assist us in realising such economic liberalisation as it must, the galvanising and positive transforming effects of the establishment of the CSME will be immediately and profoundly felt for many years to come.

The tremendous promise of the Caribbean Single Market and Economy is that it allows us to contemplate stronger regional economic growth and development, the emergence of more competitive Caribbean economic and financial enterprises, a more rational and efficient use of the region’s resources, to put in place more effective integration of the liberalised regional economy first into the new Hemispheric economy that will come with the FTAA and generally into the evolving global economy, and a better life for our people within a new mould of regional unity rather than the old mould of regional divisiveness.

Pragmatism, however, cautions me not to overstate the degree of difficulty that will be encountered in realising that promise. 

The Caribbean today is essentially where Europe was in 1985 when it agreed on the programme for the creation of a unified Economic Space in Europe.

But the translation of the legal arrangements for such European integration into a real single economy was accompanied by and required actions to give force to that Community’s economic decisions.

Indeed, the emergence in Europe of supranational policy and decision making institutions at the political level was one of the most important developments that helped to make full European economic integration a successful reality.

The creation of this Unit in Barbados will help to bring a new energy to our regional efforts to implement a Single Market and Economy. Sooner or later, however, serious considerations will have to be given to creating the forms of regional governance that can make possible and workable a truly regional economy. Such forms of governance do not now exist. The sooner we address issues pertaining to regional governance, the smoother will be the path towards a Single Regional Economy.

Secondly, although economic integration is most needed by small vulnerable economies, the experience has been that it has been traditionally most often, most effectively, practised by economies which are already powerful.

The Caribbean has come to the critical point of re-inventing itself in a Single Market and Economy in circumstances where some of its constituent members find themselves in such desperate straits that a special effort has to be made to ready all Caribbean economies to participate in the CSME. 

That is what gives the initiative, sanctioned by our Heads, to create a new Regional Stabilisation Fund and Programme such, vital significance at this time.   I use this evening’s occasion to call for support from every corner of the region for their creation and swift implementation.

Indeed, the success of Europe’s integration has been greatly facilitated by the effects of specially created Social Cohesion Funds and Regional Development Funds that have assisted Ireland, Spain and Portugal to catch up with their neighbours and in the process has  allowed European integration to be a tide which has lifted all boats.

Some of the domestic economies in the region are doing well and will hold their own.

But the situation facing others is so desperate that the first exercise in which this Unit must be involved  is that of helping to make the most vulnerable members of the Caribbean Community capable of being successful partners in this most important economic initiative ever conceived for our region – the re-incarnation of the Caribbean as a single successful economic space.

My Government has determined to support the creation and operation of this Unit at a time when our financial circumstances are themselves under a bit of strain.

But we will honour our commitments because what we are doing is something that needs to be done, and is something that simply must be successfully carried through.

It is in that assurance that I am proud to be part of this evening’s occasion, and look to the work of this Unit helping to create a united and more prosperous Caribbean.