Commentary: Integrating Latin America and the Caribbean
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| Published on Saturday, March 3, 2007 |
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By Sir Ronald Sanders
Guyana has become the first English-speaking country to host a summit meeting of the Rio Group made up of 21 Latin American and Caribbean nations.
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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 |
In addition to the Guyanese President Bharrat Jagdeo, seven other Heads of Government of the Rio Group were in Guyana for the meeting held on the weekend of March 2nd and 3rd.
While a larger turn out of Heads of Government would have made the meeting more meaningful, some very important ones showed up including Mexico’s Felipe de Jesus Calderon Hinojosa, Brazil’s Luis Ignacio Lula de Silva, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Chile’s Michelle Bachelet.
Guyana is the current official representative in the Rio Group of the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM) countries, but Belize is also a member of the group, and the Guyanese President invited Trinidad and Tobago’s Prime Minister Patrick Manning to participate in the informal sessions of the summit.
With attendance too by the Dominican Republic (DR) President Leonel Antonio Fernandez Reyna, there were several interests represented at the meeting.
The DR and CARICOM countries are together presently negotiating with the European Union (EU) for an Economic Partnership Agreement which will determine the aid, trade and investment relationship between these two groups for some time to come.
Similarly the DR and Central American countries represented at the summit are party to a Free Trade Agreement with the United States, and five of the Latin American countries are deepening their own trading arrangements under the umbrella of Mercosur.
Then there is the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) being promoted by the Venezuelan President as a regional integration strategy for Latin America, as well as a possible alternative to US notion of a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).
And, in the midst of all this, are the, albeit stalled, but nonetheless overarching negotiations in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) for new arrangements that would govern world trade rules.
Discussions about trade were not expected to feature highly on the agenda of the meeting, and while the Declaration of Turkeyen, the end of Conference communiqué, will undoubtedly try to reflect a consensus position of the Rio Group, with all the different and, in some cases, divergent interests involved, whatever they say on trade is unlikely to advance the international agenda.
The great value of this summit is that it provided an opportunity for a small but important number of Heads of Government from the Caribbean and Latin America to talk informally and to exchange ideas about how the relationship between Latin American and Caribbean countries could be deepened in their joint interest.
Meeting at the political level is a necessary first step for creating the framework for an economic relationship that could benefit the people of Latin America and the Caribbean, through trade and investment. But, at the practical level it is the business communities in each of these countries that could give flesh to the bones of such an economic relationship. In turn, they will need an enabling environment which must include the establishment of direct transportation arrangements, access to financing, and a facility for English, Spanish and Portuguese.
The Rio Group is primarily an organ of political consultation; it does not have a mandate to institute arrangements for economic integration, and a summit meeting of only eight Heads of Government, however influential they may be, would be reluctant to do so.
Further, the Group does not have a permanent secretariat and its work between meetings is carried out by the country to which the Chairmanship falls.
However, there are other organisations to which members of the Rio Group belong who have the capacity to initiate arrangements for structured economic relations between Latin American and Caribbean countries. CARICOM and the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) countries, and CARICOM and Mercosur could formally pursue discussions that might have arisen from informal consultations between the Heads of Government.
It is to be hoped that arising from this meeting, the Rio group will take on the role of promoting Latin American and Caribbean economic integration through institutions such as the Inter-American Bank.
In any event, Guyana did well to carry the work of the Rio Group during its period of Chairmanship. It has also done well to host the Summit, and, in doing so, to act as a bridge between Latin America and the Caribbean.
A Conference of Latin American countries in English-speaking Guyana as the representative of CARICOM, has immense symbolic value. It demonstrates that the divide between the two sub-regions, which are a consequence, of colonial history and imperial interests in the past, can be overcome. | | | | Reads : 266 | | | |
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