Cari­com has made lit­tle progress in de­vel­op­ing its sin­gle mar­ket and econ­o­my, ac­cord­ing to Hugh Howard, pres­i­dent, Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce T&T."In 2006 the de­c­la­ra­tion of sin­gle mar­ket readi­ness was signed es­tab­lish­ing the Cari­com Sin­gle Mar­ket. Re­gret­tably, in 2013, some sev­en years lat­er, the CSME has made lit­tle progress. The 'E' has been put off in­def­i­nite­ly and many mem­ber states, T&T in­clud­ed ,have not ful­ly their im­ple­ment­ed their CSM oblig­a­tions."

Howard was speak­ing on Tues­day at a sem­i­nar on Trade and De­vel­op­ment in the Cari­com Re­gion host­ed by Am­Cham T&T at the Cap­i­tal Plaza Ho­tel, Port-of-Spain.He said Cari­com's ob­jec­tives of es­tab­lish­ing a com­mon ex­ter­nal tar­iff, com­mon cur­ren­cy, con­ver­gent eco­nom­ic and mon­e­tary pol­i­cy and har­mo­niza­tion of laws have not been met.

"I have ref­er­enced the short­com­ing of Cari­com, not to in­di­cate it as a failed ve­hi­cle, but rather to em­pha­sise that de­spite the short­com­ings, in­te­gra­tion is not an op­tion, it is an im­per­a­tive. It is al­so note­wor­thy that our man­u­fac­tur­ers and en­tre­pre­neurs have ben­e­fit­ted sig­nif­i­cant­ly from in­tra-re­gion­al trade with our Cari­com coun­ter­parts," he said.He com­plained that Cari­com is "plagued by weak­ness­es."

"It is a mat­ter of pub­lic record that Cari­com re­mains plagued by weak­ness­es. Ex­am­ples in­clude the ab­sence of an ef­fec­tive gov­er­nance struc­ture to en­sure im­ple­men­ta­tion of de­ci­sions tak­en. Al­so lack of ap­pro­pri­ate ma­chin­ery with­in the Sec­re­tari­at and re­lat­ed re­gion­al in­sti­tu­tions to co-or­di­nate and ex­e­cute agreed pro­grammes ex­pe­di­tious­ly and de­lay in ful­ly im­ple­ment­ing con­tin­gent rights of Cari­com pro­fes­sion­als to give re­al mean­ing to the con­cept of free­dom of move­ment," he said.

Howard said de­vel­op­ments around the world in trade and fi­nance ne­ces­si­tates Cari­com move quick­ly to get its house in or­der.

"The glob­al land­scape is chang­ing, coun­tries are faced with chal­lenges to their economies such as of fis­cal deficits, neg­a­tive Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct (GDP) growth, alarm­ing sov­er­eign debt, coun­try com­pet­i­tive­ness to name a few. De­vel­oped coun­tries like France, Italy, the Unit­ed States, Unit­ed King­dom and Ger­many are some promi­nent ex­am­ples of these trends. It is es­sen­tial that small economies like those in Cari­com in­te­grate in or­der to deal with vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty as­so­ci­at­ed with size and economies of scale," he said.