Persaud highlights recommendations
During a recent web forum, Professor Avinash Persaud, Chairman of the CARICOM Commission on the Economy, highlighted that he believes CARICOM and the region’s economy could benefit greatly from enhanced co-operation and subsidiarity.
Persaud explained these notions as he delivered remarks during the Central Bank of Barbados’ June edition of the Caribbean Economic Forum to discuss recommendations from the report of the CARICOM Commission on the Economy.
The report, which Persaud stated was titled ‘Caribbean 9.58’, a salute to Usain Bolt’s record-breaking 100-metre dash, highlighted a few recommendations necessary to get the economic gears of the Caribbean moving again.
“So one of our recommendations is something that’s called ‘subsidiarity’. It’s a long word and what it means is really that you must take decisions at the closest level to people that they are best made. So for example, if you're deciding how to organize garbage collection, probably not best done regionally, probably best done at the parish level,” he said.
“The second key obstacle, we think, is that people have a sort of notion that Caribbean economies and Caribbean countries are just squabbling with each other all the time, and we never agree. The reality is that there’s actually a tremendous amount of agreement, but it’s not unanimity. And there are many, many things which are stuck at the CARICOM level, not because no one agreed, but because 14 countries agreed but not 15 or 13 or 12 or 10.
“And so we’ve come up with an idea which would be called ‘enhanced co-operation’. And what this means is that a minimum of five countries needed to agree to progress in a particular way.”
Finally, Persaud reported that the final thing they found while doing research for the report was that money caused a lot of the arguments at the CARICOM level.
“We squabble most about money – who’s contributing most or least. And so we looked at all the things we need to do as a region, and we thought we’re going to discipline ourselves and focus on those four or five things that actually don’t require money, but will make a big difference in how we move as a region.” (CLJB)