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CARICOM Single Market & Economy (CSME) on track despite hurdles – PM Stuart
(BGIS) – Barbados Prime Minister Freundel Stuart, has sent a clear message that the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Single Market and Economy (CSME) is still a “front burner” issue despite significant hurdles encountered along the way to its full implementation.
In an attempt to silence the naysayers on the integration project, he told a standing room only audience at the Errol Barrow Center for Creative Imagination, University of the West Indies Cave Hill Campus, recently that despite significant hurdles, some progress has been made.
While delivering the lecture on the topic: The Global Crisis: An Opportunity for Collaboration and Cohesion Between CARICOM Member States, Prime Minister Stuart said some people had wrongly predicted the demise of the CSME and pointed out that the movement had remained one of the most effective means of developing, protecting and promoting the regional economic space in an increasingly complex global economic environment.
“Within this context of its being another mechanism for bringing people closer, Barbados’ commitment to the realization of a fully functioning CSME within the regional integration movement is both irrevocable and profund. The region has made commendable progress in advancing the creation of the CSME, resting on the five pillars of the free movement of goods, services, capital, skilled labor and the free movement of enterprises,” he surmised.
Acknowledging that the creation of the single economy had not been as swift, Stuart pointed out that the issues involved were a little more complex, and, understandably, required more thought.
“When I chaired the last meeting of the Prime Ministerial Sub-Committee on CSME in July in St. Lucia, it was the distinguished President of Guyana who highlighted the existence of not too latent fears in some member states of how a single economy might affect a status quo that is working for those member states right now, Mr. Stuart recalled.
He further stated: “There are legislative mechanisms to be put in place; institutional structures to be established and, yes, fears to be exorcised. We are moving steadily along, always conscious of the benefits to be derived by our people but, taking note also, of valuable lessons to be learnt from elsewhere.”
