Down to two

Two Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) certificates is what it could take to move around the Caribbean freely to work and live.

At least, that is among the key proposals on the table from the CARICOM Commission on the Economy in the latest attempt to ramp up trade and investment among the 15-member regional grouping.

Commissioner Dr Damien King joined Commission chairman Professor Avinash Persaud and University of the West Indies academic and trade specialist, Dr Jan Yves Remy last Thursday for a review of the recently released 49-page report on the Caribbean Economic Forum hosted by the Central Bank of Barbados which examined the topic, Putting People at the Center of Development in the Caribbean.

Insisting that bureaucracy was a major hindrance to the expansion of trade and business in the region, King said: “We propose lowering the skills requirement to just two CXCs and making it automatic. So once you can demonstrate, by perhaps a certificate on your smart phone, or something embedded in your passport, that you have those two CXCs, then there is no bureaucratic process after that.

“You arrive at immigration, and you have your evidence, and you can go.”

King, a senior social sciences lecturer at the Mona Campus of UWI, told the regional programme hosted by the Central Bank of Barbados: “We also looked at the issue of mobility of labour. The CARICOM Single Market and Economy made a huge deal about attempting to promote free movement of labour – mobility of labour. The fact is the process is difficult bureaucratically.”

During the tenure of late Prime Minister Owen Arthur, he stressed the importance of an active single market and economy in CARICOM and free movement of labour was one of the key pillars.

Meanwhile, Professor Persaud rejected the suggestion that Caribbean Community (CARICOM) states seldom agreed.

The financial analyst noted: “People have this notion that Caribbean economies and countries are just squabbling with each other all the time and we never agree. The reality is that there is a tremendous amount of agreement, but it is not unanimity.”

Persaud, who is a key economic advisor to Prime Minister Mia Mottley observed: “There are many things that are stuck at the CARICOM level, not because nobody agrees, but because 14 countries agree and not 15 or 13, or 12 or 10. So we have come up with the idea which we call enhanced cooperation.

“It means you must take decisions at the closest level to people . . . Limit the number of things we try to do regionally,” he added.

Persaud told the regional audience “So, if five countries agree to move ahead and the other ten are not going to be made worse off, then the five can move ahead.”

Offering her observations on the Commission’s report, deputy director of the Shridath Ramphal Centre for Trade Law, Policy & Services Dr Jan Yves Remy cautioned that while enhanced cooperation had been used in the European Union and in Africa, it had resulted in some disquiet among trading partners.

“In CARICOM we have 15 countries that are small, so the question becomes one of economics. Is there going to be enough of a critical mass if some move ahead . . . and we don’t want a fractured movement in CARICOM” as she said occurred in Africa. (IMC1)