"A crisis of will.”
That is what Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Mottley believes has confronted the Caribbean region as a major hurdle in regional integration, when she spoke at the opening of the Regional Transformation forum for inclusive and sustainable growth at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre in Bridgetown yesterday morning.
“It’ a crisis of will.We have known for too long what is required for a greater pace of integration. People’s mobility is required to create conditions conducive to growth. Rather than create jealousy by identity or size, what is required is a greater number of people coming to work in our country to expand production every day.”
Prime Minister Mottley has for the third day running now taken potshots at CARICOM and the Caribean Single Market Economy(CSME) for its inability to properly effect major changes needed to jump start CSME.
Over the last few days she has been speaking at various forums in Barbados and has continuously brought this point up in the discussion, but yesterday she spent a great deal longer driving home her point.
A number of new measures were discussed at the CARICOM summit in St Lucia in July which included: a common financial services agreement, the harmonisation of stock exchanges, the creation of a credit rating agency and a common investment policy for CARICOM.
Although these were complex issues that had to be agreed upon by each jurisdiction with legal drafting proving a major obstacle, PM Mottley indicated that the numbers “did not add up.”
She made comparisons of Surinam being larger than the Netherlands but yet, they continued to struggle with barely being able to make up a population of 600,000 while the Netherlands population was just over 17 million. The issues she indicated are all connected to mobility.”I want to make the point that within the region there is a will to ensure we have a flow. The constraints of size will add as inhibitors for growth,” said Mottley who spoke ad-lib.
Mottley addressed government officials, central bank governors and others from across the Caribbean and Latin America, warned that we must find a way to fix this problem soon or “we will be known as the poorest region in the world.”
Climate crisis was also critical the Barbadian prime minister pointed out saying we have to ensure that is “it did not burden resilience so we can move on a development trajectory.”
She admitted that the region did not have the “financial capability to deal with the “climate crisis.” Apart from major hurricanes and storms, she noted that droughts and the Sargassum weed had also troubled the Caribbean region. “Vulnerability is not something we hold on to with pride- it is our reality.”
She made a special plea to all CARICOM leaders to ensure all is done to facilitate the much-needed changes for CSME before next year’s Caribbean heads of government meeting. “ We have to be able to reflect on our actions and renew our relationships if we are to come along.”