Still some CSME challenges

The Caribbean Single Market & Economy (CSME) may be functioning, but there are still quite a few imperfections that need to be ironed out, says a top CARICOM official.

Programme manager at the CARICOM Secretariat’s CSME Unit, Ivor Carryl, told a meeting of stakeholders yesterday at Grand Barbados that the CSME was still grappling with the free movement of labour within the territories, a cultural gap and some countries’ reluctance to do business outside of their own territories.

“We have to deal with the free movement of skills. What drives an economy is its people, and free movement is a pivotal driver of the economy,” he noted.

Carryl also hammered home the point that there was a need to open up the “market space” so that people could work freely in other territories instead of honing their skills and taking them to countries outside of the CSME territories.

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Makushi band uses music to reclaim dying culture

By Candace Phillips

Recognising that there has been a loss of various forms of Amerindian culture in their community, the Suruma Makushi Culture Band aspires to use its cultural performances as a means of reigniting interest and involvement in this dying way of life.

“We use the band to try to hold on to culture for as long as possible. When children look at us they must be inspired,” said Glendon Allicock, leader of the group which is based in Surama, Region Nine. “Our culture is rapidly declining and nobody is saying anything to stop this,” he said in dismay.

The home of the Makushi Culture Band is a community which is located 18 miles north of Annai, which has approximately 280 residents who regard tourism as their main export product. While over the years at heritage celebrations, there have been groups who have performed, this band is the most recognised of its kind and works diligently to better its craft.

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British manipulation of Guyana in the 1960s

In the last of the current series Mike Thomson investigates how Britain covertly manipulated the democratic process in its South American colony, then known as British Guiana in the run up to its independence in 1966. Mike discovers new documents which show that they deliberately scuppered the outcome of their own conference organised to determine the country's future.

On the face of it the conference, held in London in October 1963, was designed to confirm the constitutional future for what was then British Guiana. Publicly Britain encouraged the country's Prime Minister Dr Cheddi Jagan - who had been fairly elected in 1961 - and the leader of the opposition Linden Forbes Burnham to agree terms for independence. However, behind the scenes, the documents reveal that the British were working to a different outcome - to ensure that agreement was never reached.

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Roma deportations by France a disgrace, says EU

France was forced on to the defensive over Nicolas Sarkozy's crackdown on the Roma population today after the European commission threatened the French government with legal action, labelling the policy disgraceful and comparing it to second world war deportations.

In her first direct criticism of France, after being widely reviled for prevaricating, Viviane Reding, the European commissioner for justice, attacked the Sarkozy government over the mass expulsions of Roma people and accused it of duplicity in its dealings with Brussels.

Reding likened the recent deportation of almost 1,000 Gypsies to Romania and Bulgaria to Vichy France's treatment of Jews in the second world war. She said Brussels had no option but to launch infringement proceedings, meaning that France could be hauled before the European court of justice.

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Caricom states must do better

By Sir Ronald Sanders

ONLY one Caricom country made the top 50 countries in the World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Report 2010-2011. Barbados is rated at 43 of 139 countries surveyed.

Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, and Guyana were rated 84, 95, and110 respectively.
No other Caricom country was rated because of a lack of survey data.

This is not good news for Caricom, already beset by severe economic problems including high debt to GDP ratios, increasing unemployment, and contracting economies.

Barbados' higher ranking over the three other Caricom countries surveyed is due, according to the report, to its better health and educational facilities and technological readiness, but it got poor marks for inefficient government bureaucracy, access to financing, a poor work ethic among the labour force and foreign currency regulations.

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More money being sent back to region

WASHINGTON – After what was considered to be a “rough 2009”, the World Bank says remittances are on the rise again in the Caribbean.

A briefing paper by the Washington-based financial institution said remittances “began to bottom out during the last quarter of 2009” and, as a result, “money transfers now appear to be on the rise” in Jamaica, Haiti and other places.

The briefing paper said remittances to Latin America and the Caribbean didn’t fall as sharply as private capital flows to the region, as investors pulled out of emerging markets.

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