Jamaica-DR accord should give...

secure better value from the processes of regional integration and cooperation within the wider Caribbean region. Reportedly this document is now with Prime Minister Holness and the Jamaican cabinet for review before being tabled in Parliament.

What the visit suggested is that not only has the global political and economic landscape changed, but that the Caribbean is becoming a very different place to when the revised Treaty of Chaguaramas establishing the Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME) was signed in 2001. It also suggested the possibility that a moment may come when the economic reconfiguration of the Caribbean is required if Caricom is unable to progress or to implement decisions.

Speaking recently at the opening of a meeting of Caricom’s Council for Trade and Economic Development (Coted), Caricom’s Secretary General, Irwin LaRocque, recognised publicly the implications of the implementation deficit.

Noting Caricom leaders’ concern that some of their decisions were not being complied with, he warned that “the Council itself was [being] hampered by non-compliance with its decisions”, suggesting that “the failure to adhere to the rules of the integration movement posed a threat to the credibility of the Community”.

While Caricom has struggled to make the CSME work, and is seemingly disinterested in making progress on deepening its economic relations with the Dominican Republic, Dominicans have seen their economy advance consistently, so that in 2016 its annual growth rate at 6.1 per cent was reported to be the highest in the Americas.

It has also forged new trade arrangements, for instance, recently agreeing to negotiate a partial scope free trade agreement with Cuba. This is expected to lead by the end of 2018 to the two largest independent Caribbean economies negotiating significant tariff reductions, easing nontariff barriers, and harmonising phytosanitary and other regulations that currently impede trade between the two nations.

The implication of the Holness visit is that Jamaica has recognised that bilateral political and economic engagement with the Dominican Republic offers real benefits.

If new thinking of this kind is to have a wider application, the Dominican Republic and Caricom need to overcome their differences. If not, where complementarities exist, other nations will find ways to deepen their bilateral relationship. Unfortunately, what is missing still is any region wide pragmatic discussion about the economic gains that could be achieved from a closer relationship with much larger neighbours including Cuba, especially if trade asymmetries for smaller states in the region could be created.

Any such change also requires the Dominican Republic to overcome its reservations, do more to develop relations with Anglophone Caribbean nations, and take government-led steps to offset the national negativity created by historic prejudice, and Caricom’s strident criticism of the Dominican Republic’s response to its efforts to regularise the position of undocumented Haitians.

Jamaica’s and the Dominican Republic’s initiative, and others of the kind undertaken last year by Antigua’s Prime Minister, Gaston Browne, suggest that there is a growing recognition that Caricom is likely to make little progress as a bloc of 5.5 million English speakers unless some or all of its members find a way to embrace the significantly more populous and larger economies of the Hispanic Caribbean.

Previous columns can be found at www.caribbean-council.org