As Barbados and three other CARICOM member states prepare to deepen regional ties through expanded freedom of movement, Dr Delisle Worrell is arguing that some of the grouping’s most cherished goals may no longer be attainable.
“To continue to set freedom of movement of goods and persons across the region as the goal of the integration movement is to ask the impossible,” the former Central Bank governor said in his September Economic Letter, Beyond the Dream of a Single Market and Currency.
As of October 1, citizens of Barbados, Belize, Dominica, and St Vincent and the Grenadines will be able to live and work freely across those four nations, accessing not just jobs, but also education and healthcare. The move, agreed independently by the quartet, marks a step forward in regional integration, though broader CARICOM efforts remain stalled.
Worrell argued that CARICOM’s ambitions have long exceeded its structural capacity. He pointed to the 1992 West Indian Commission report Time for Action as the last credible attempt to reshape the regional body, with proposals for a CARICOM parliament, executive commissioners, a shared budget and a single currency.
“As we all know, none of these initiatives was implemented, and by now all but the dream of a common currency has been forgotten,” wrote the former IMF adviser whose resume spans regional finance, policy and academia.
Rather than lament what CARICOM has failed to become, Worrell urged the region to embrace its real value: a network of cultural, educational and professional linkages that fosters regional consciousness.
“We cannot imagine the region without these linkages,” he said. “To have motivated and inspired this regional network is the true value of CARICOM.”
He warned that unrealistic expectations risk undermining public faith “because we have set goals for the regional organisation which can no longer be attained”. “CARICOM will never be a decision-making body,” Worrell said.
“The apex body of CARICOM, the Heads of Government, lacks a regional mandate. On every issue where decisions of the regional body conflict with national interests, the regional decision will be sacrificed.”
The former executive director of the Caribbean Centre for Money and Finance suggested that a similar logic applies to the common currency.
At the recent CARIFESTA XV Grand Market in Barbados, he noted, vendors from across the region transacted in US dollars. “The individual country currencies have no value beyond the borders of the territories where they originate,” he said. “All payments and exchanges between currencies are settled in US dollars.”
He argued that clinging to the idea of a single Caribbean currency ignores the region’s economic reality. “We should dispense with the inconvenience of individual currencies that derive their value from the US dollar, which we already use for all regional and international payments.”
(EJ)
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