Smooth Transistion To CSME Unlikely, Expert Warns

by Amanda Banks, Tax-News.com, London

06 June 2003

According to a report in the Barbados Advocate this week, an expert on Caribbean regional affairs has warned the local population that the initiation of the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME) is likely to bring many teething troubles in its wake as institutions adapt.

Speaking earlier in the week, Chris Sinkler, executive director of the Caribbean Policy Development Centre told the Advocate: "I think that it is a natural process of attrition because sometimes when you implement things, you don’t always get them right. When the WTO (World Trade Organisation) was implemented, a lot of the problems that have now cropped up weren’t clearly identified and anticipated when it was first signed, but having gone now five or seven years into the WTO, we are now seeing some fundamental flaws."

Sinkler commented that other major factors that are likely to complicate the transition to a single economy are the FTAA (Free Trade Association of the Americas) negotiations and any other regional or global initiatives that will inevitably crop up such as WTO talks. In addition, many Caribbean nations are in the process of negotiating bi-lateral treaties with the likes of Mexico, the United states and Canada.

Sinkler observed "from the time you begin to realise those problems, you will be fully into an FTAA and you will be perhaps into a WTO development round where Governments are going to be asked to make commitments at both of these levels”.

"A lot of the time that we should’ve spent really speeding up the implementation of the single market and economy and refining it ... has been lost and will be lost and because of that we are not going to pick up a lot of problems that we normally would have picked up if we were going at a slower or a less frantic pace," The CPDC official concluded.

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