ARTICLE 45 of the Revised Treaty Of Chaguaramas commits to the “goal of free movement of nationals within the Community”.
We have always known that we wanted to create a single space in which business could thrive, where the constraints of small size could be mitigated by regionally allocated economies of scale and where our shared common identity would smooth the way and allow for the construction of blended societies.
The challenge has always been how far, how fast and how deep. We have always battled with questions of political will, implementation deficits, insularities and the impact that all these things combined have on the process.
While crafted by technocrats, approved by political leaders and implemented by bureaucrats, the provisions of the Treaty are, at their core, a demonstration of the need for the retreat of the state and the advance of business.
The treaty is a rallying call for businesses to use its provisions to expand their operations into a common regional space populated by nine million and better prepare themselves for integration into global production and trading value chains. But at all levels, we have fallen below the mark in the main, and just a few shining examples are giving life to the vision of our forefathers and the treaty’s provisions.
At a political level ambition needs to be raised, technically, there is a disconnect from the end users – the business community – and business facilitation remains a challenge.
In the private sector, we remain wholly too conservative and inward-looking and vastly underutilize the existing provisions of the treaty to address systemic constraints in our businesses.
The provisions of Chapter 3 of the Revised Treaty provide for a suite of rights which, when combined, treat comprehensively with the modalities for businesses and community nationals to expand their business prospects.
It is not possible, in my mind, to have a discussion of free movement as a stand-alone issue.
Instead, freedom of movement is also tied to the establishment of new commercial presence which translates essentially into business development. That establishment does not at all have to be limited to services trading but is in fact very feasible in any economic sector.
If we pair the services regime, including movement, with the trade, agricultural and industrial policies of CARICOM, it would give practical effect to the concept of regional production integration.
That, in my view, is where we should be going with this process. There is no reason why in 2013 we have only a few companies taking advantage of concessional rates for land in Guyana, for example, establishing a commercial presence, using a combination of local and imported labour from within the community based on competitive advantages of different states and then pooling those resources to build world class companies.
There is no conceivable good reason why we have not gone further with our investment regime as a collective, creating regional production value chains which are differentiated and building regionally scaled capacity instead of intra-regional competition.
The freedom of movement regime needs to be seen as a logical extension of our wider trade and economic development policy ambitions and in turn as a means of creating business development opportunities within the community.
Business development is the foundation of economic development. Economic development gives rise to export-led trading. The strength of the region’s integration movement through the free circulation of goods, services and persons, is designed to support those interrelated objectives and support economic growth in the region.
The challenge is not limited to the free movement regime, but to our overall vision for regional integration and our ability to tie it to our long-term economic ambitions.
