CARIBBEAN: It’s Anchors-A-Weigh to Integration

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Dec 5 1996 (IPS) - Like ships anchored far out at sea, the nations of the Carribean are preparing to weigh anchor and set sail determinedly on the long voyage to integration.

The second ordinary meeting of the Association of Caribbean States (ACS) to be held from Dec 9 to 13 in Havana, will put the finishing touches on a phase of organisational phase which began in Cartagena, Colombia, in June 1994.

Although the guidelines of the integration forum were sketched out in the summit of heads of state and government last year in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, they still have to make the move from paper to practice.

One of the main challenges facing the region is to improve communications in order to embark on a process of integration where production and technological cooperation will play an essential part.

The Latin American Economic System (SELA) meeting in its headquarters in Venezuela in February concluded that a broader vision of the Caribbean region will be needed to produce effective economic and trade measures consolidated by democratisation.

The ACS includes 25 full member sovereign states in the Caribbean, Central and South America, including the Group of Three – Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela – the seven Central American nations, the 13 CARICOM members, Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

There are 12 associate dependent territories, and special members include Britain, France and the Netherlands.

Puerto Rico is not in the association as the United States refused to allow it, as a free associated State, to enter a regional forum where Cuba is a full member.

The ACS’s inauguration last year was seen as a necessary “survival alternative” by the majority of Caribbean nations, in a world increasingly dominated by economic blocs.

The countries of the area, with their varying cultures, languages and levels of development, see their economic future threatened by the free trade agreements between Mexico, Canada and the United States, and the existence of a fully operative common market in Europe.

Cuban specialist Gerardo Gonzalez said competition with Mexico, in unequal conditions and based on the same export products, would lead to “the distancing of the Caribbean from its main market.”

Meanwhile, European integration could affect the preferences given to sugar, banana and rum exports to Europe, which are so vital for small nations like Dominica, Grenada, Santa Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.

Sources within the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) stated the Caribbean grew by three percent in the eighties, a figure higher than that of Latin America as a whole.

But growth was accompanied by a balance of payments deficit, an increase in foreign debt, over-dependence on a few traditional products and increased dependence on tourism, according to the American Studies Centre in Havana.

Experts said that under these conditions, to strengthen the union the ACS must make decisions which go further than the purely trade and tariff related issues, travelling the difficult path of production and technological integration.

The ACS nations cover an area of 5.23 million sq km, have 202 million inhabitants and a Gross Domestic Product of 508,398 million dollars. In 1995, they imported goods worth 101,782 million dollars and exported 80,883 million.

However, the Caribbean is even more dependent on other regions due to its lack of infrastructure, the poor level of development of some of the island nations and because eleven of the associate territories are not independent States.

According to “Opciones,” the Cuban financial and trade weekly, the Caribbean nations buy in 75 percent of the raw materials and consumption products from outside the region, carrying out barely seven percent of their trade within the area.

The main Caribbean trade routes run to Britain, France, the Netherlands and the United States, whereby transport becomes one of the main obstacles to developing interregional trade.

Cuban analysts said other problems faced by the integration process was the continued dependence on the old colonial centres, the cultural diversity and the fact that all the nations essentially rely on the same export products.

Esteban Ramirez, the economic analyst on “Opciones,” said it is clear “when trade potential is reduced to only a few products, production integration becomes more valuable.”

Cuba proposed that, in an initial phase, tourism – a sector with a good economic future in the area – could become the motor for regional trade and offered formulae for solid cooperation.

According to the World Tourism Organisation, the number of visitors to the region grew 83.4 percent from 1983 to 1993, making the leisure industry the most dynamic sector of the Caribbean economy.

Carlos Zamora, Latin America and Caribbean director in Cuba’s foreign ministry, said the second ordinary meeting of the ACS Council of Ministers must pick up on the Port of Spain agreements on tourism, trade and transport.

The regions’ foreign ministers must approve a special fund to be used in integration projects, along with plans of action for trade, economic relations, environment, science, technology, health, education, culture and sport.