‘Reinventing the CSME’

CSME’ GEORGETOWN, Guyana – Professor Norman Girvan, in an address entitled, ‘Reinventing the CSME,’ to the Caribbean Association of Judicial Officers (CAJO) in Barbados, last Friday, assessed the crisis in the regional economic integration process, focusing on the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME), and proposed a possible way out.
CARICOM’s problems have already been subject to much analysis; no need to repeat the litany of woes bedevilling its flagship programme, the CSME, or Prof Girvan’s own recapping of its sorry history of missed deadlines, incomplete status and uncertain future. Suffice it to say, the widely respected Caribbean development economist describes the CSME as “comatose” and advocates that it be ‘reinvented.’