Thursday, August 22, 2013

Two Years and Counting – the OECS Economic Union

Posted by at

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Reality bites really hard, Micah. But despite the glacial pace regarding the so-called freedom of movement in the OECS, it is light years ahead of CARICOM. One thing that seems a constant is that progress is conspicuously inconspicuous in that wider Caribbean entity.

Some inescapable challenges still loom large. First is the lack of easy and cheap transportation between OECS Member States. Even more stubborn, is the near absence of complementarity in terms of factors of production and human skills between the countries.

All of the Member States of the OECS being are still, almost at the same stage of development technologically and economically speaking. It is very difficult to build either sustainable product or services supply chains within the grouping, when no one country's population or economy can boast of having a competitive advantage in either of these.

Regarding the wider integration movement in the region, the OECS being a microcosm, Mr. Errol Barrow, former prime minister of Barbados once quipped: "Who will buy my white sand? Who will buy my gray sand"?

Chalkdust, the calypsonian, said it even more starkly in song: "All we have is sun, seawater and sand." To trade with, that is.

The integration and movement of financial capital may be easier, but not any less problematic. Witness the region's travails with CLICO from Bermuda to the north of us, through to its headquarters in Trinidad.

Even the conglomerates, even after having cherry-picked the best performing business units in some countries for acquisition, have afterwards, not put out stellar business performances. Without any hint of applying ERP systems to manage their resulting asset gains, the commonality has been oftentimes, "the destruction of capital".

CLICO's excursions and resulting financial settlements up and down the island chain bears ample testimony of this.

August 22, 2013 at 3:25 PM
Anonymous said...

It's because black people cannot unite, we suffer from the willie lynch syndrome...it's true.

August 22, 2013 at 4:55 PM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)