Sir Ronald Sanders is a business executive and former Caribbean diplomat who publishes widely on small states in the global community. Reponses to: ronaldsanders29@hotmail.com

For fourteen years, some governments have filibustered over the plan, worried, it seems, about the loss of individual national control even though each structure presented so far has resided final authority in councils of ministers drawn from each territory and, of course, in Heads of Government themselves. 
 
When CARICOM Heads of Government meet early in 2007, a new report on governance of the Caribbean Community will be before them.  It is to be hoped that this time, given the competition that the region is facing in the international community, for trade, investment and aid, they will be emboldened to put the necessary machinery in place.

One thing is for sure: if the Single Market is not completed in all its aspects, and the governance of the community remains unsettled, the prospect of a Single Economy in 2008 – which is a far more ambitious even though vital project – will dim as it drifts into the distance.

CARICOM can not afford the delay.  And, it can no longer live on the laurels of being one of the most advanced regional integration movements in global society.  Events in world trade, in business competitiveness, in science and technology are overtaking it.  Real empowerment has to be given to the regional integration structure if it CARICOM and its member states are to advance.  If such empowerment does not occur, some of the more progressive member states will break out on their own, and the regional process will wither on the vine.

Already some governments of CARICOM countries believe that, in their individual interest, they should be entering bilateral trade and investment relationships with countries like the US, Canada, India and China.  Countries, such as Trinidad and Tobago, which have resources - particularly oil and gas - in which these larger countries are very interested, may not long tolerate the constraints of a slow moving and indecisive CARICOM. 

The Single Market will also continue not to fulfill its promise to farmers and manufacturers in CARICOM until governments pay serious attention to transportation within the region by developing a common and enforceable transportation policy.   It is not a tribute to CARICOM that after 33 years of existence, the agricultural and manufacturing production of CARICOM states can not be transported within the region.  Yet, both farm products and manufactured goods can be brought to individual countries through the United States.

It should be noted that the region’s bill for food imported from outside the areas is now US$3.6 billion.

A policy of CARICOM wide incentives for creating a shipping industry within the region is non-existent.  But, if the market were to be developed to include all the CARICOM countries plus Cuba and the Dominican Republic, a profitable investment opportunity surely presents itself.

In the meantime, the absence of an agreed policy has made a complete mess of regional air transportation.  As 2007 dawns, neither tourism to the region nor Caribbean travelers within the region can feel secure.  Instead of one regional airline – or at least a merger of some of the costly activities of individual carriers – national carriers are continuing to compete among themselves.  Caribbean Airlines, the successor to BWIA, will compete with the new airline that emerges from negotiations between LIAT and Caribbean Star; Air Jamaica will compete with Caribbean Airlines on traffic from the US into the Caribbean; and Caribbean Airlines operations from the United Kingdom will have no Caribbean identity as British Airways aircraft takes BWIA’s place in a code sharing deal.

The arrangements in air transportation have been reached by individual governments.  It seems no government is willing to offend other governments by insisting at a CARICOM level on an air transportation policy.  So, in the name of national pride or national control, the gains that could result from regional cooperation go by the way side.

At the root of this lack of progress in deepening CARICOM’s integration arrangements are two things: political pandering to, if not exploitation of, the fears by groups within national communities that they will be swamped by an influx of other Caribbean nationals into their territory; and a failure to explain effectively that CARICOM should be a single space, like the United States, where people, production, and capital of each state move freely just as, for example, the people, production and capital of Texas move to New York.

2006 witnessed a small step forward in this process when the basic foundation of the Caribbean Single Market was laid.

Beyond 2006, CARICOM must deepen the integration process and must, particularly, facilitate the integration of the factors of production to make Caribbean economies more competitive in the global economy.

It is urgent that the mental construct of national boundaries be broken down and replaced with a realistic understanding that for the people of CARICOM to survive the onslaught of global competition, CARICOM must be a single landscape.