To­day, as the 15 full mem­ber states and five as­so­ciate mem­bers of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) cel­e­brate the Gold­en Ju­bilee of the sign­ing of the Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas, which es­tab­lished the re­gion­al in­sti­tu­tion, there is no doubt that there is much about which the 19 mil­lion peo­ple who in­hab­it this space can be proud.

Brought to­geth­er by the oc­cu­pa­tion of a com­mon space be­tween North and South Amer­i­ca and a com­mon his­to­ry of slav­ery and colo­nial dom­i­nance, Cari­com’s ex­is­tence has led to the cre­ation of an im­pres­sive num­ber of in­sti­tu­tions that serve the com­mu­ni­ty’s peo­ple.

In his ad­dress at the open­ing of the 50th-an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tion yes­ter­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley list­ed 14 re­gion­al en­ti­ties that deep­en the co-op­er­a­tion be­tween and among the peo­ple of Cari­com, in ar­eas that in­clude health, ed­u­ca­tion, jus­tice, cli­mate change, and se­cu­ri­ty co-or­di­na­tion.

There is, as well, much to be proud of in the com­mu­ni­ty’s growth from the orig­i­nal four mem­ber states—Bar­ba­dos, Guyana, Ja­maica, and Trinidad and To­ba­go—to 15 full mem­bers, with the lin­guis­tic di­ver­si­ty re­sult­ing from the mem­ber­ship of Suri­name and Haiti.

The fact that Cari­com is the longest-last­ing in­te­gra­tion move­ment among de­vel­op­ing coun­tries is al­so note­wor­thy, giv­en the fail­ure of the Fed­er­a­tion and the col­lapse of CARIF­TA.

But Cari­com was al­ways meant to be both a Com­mu­ni­ty and a Com­mon Mar­ket.

While the re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion project has done a good job in cre­at­ing a com­mu­ni­ty, main­ly as a re­sult of the es­tab­lish­ment of in­sti­tu­tions, the es­tab­lish­ment of a com­mon mar­ket has been a much more dif­fi­cult task, al­though that as­pi­ra­tion has been sub­sumed un­der the Cari­com Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my (CSME).

That is not to sug­gest that there have not been im­prove­ments in the unim­ped­ed move­ment of labour and cap­i­tal among the Cari­com mem­ber states.

The ex­pand­ed cat­e­gories of labour that qual­i­fy as skilled na­tion­als are com­mend­able, but still fall short of free move­ment.

The move­ment of cap­i­tal be­tween and among the mem­ber states re­mains a prob­lem, with the con­straints of lo­cal con­tent leg­is­la­tion pre­vent­ing com­pa­nies in one Cari­com state from com­pet­ing for projects and con­tracts in an­oth­er state.

In the Ju­ly 2018 Heads of Gov­ern­ment Con­fer­ence, there was a com­mit­ment to put greater fo­cus on ad­vanc­ing those ar­eas that would help to cre­ate en­abling sup­port mea­sures for a com­pet­i­tive Sin­gle Mar­ket. Those in­clud­ed an In­vest­ment Pol­i­cy and In­vest­ment Code, an In­cen­tives Regime, an In­te­grat­ed Cap­i­tal Mar­ket, and be­gin­ning with mod­el Se­cu­ri­ties Leg­is­la­tion.

De­spite a great deal of talk about the deep­en­ing of the CSME, none of the mea­sures out­lined in the pre­vi­ous sen­tence is any clos­er to im­ple­men­ta­tion.

This be­speaks the im­ple­men­ta­tion deficit that has be­dev­illed the com­mu­ni­ty for too long, es­pe­cial­ly on is­sues of eco­nom­ic in­te­gra­tion, one of the four pil­lars up­on which Cari­com was built.

As the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion of Cari­com lead­ers re­flects on what is need­ed to sus­tain and quick­en the cre­ation of a Sin­gle Mar­ket, they must re­flect on elim­i­nat­ing this par­tic­u­lar deficit.

One so­lu­tion they may wish to con­sid­er as they meet to­day, and in the fu­ture, is the strength­en­ing of the qua­si-Cab­i­net sys­tem–in which one head of gov­ern­ment is giv­en the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of mov­ing a ma­jor goal, such as CSME, for­ward.

Cari­com will sure­ly floun­der if greater at­ten­tion is not paid to get­ting things done.