BRIDGETOWN, Barbados – Only five Caribbean Community heads of government had confirmed, up until yesterday, their participation in the two-day forum on the Caricom Single Market and Economy (CSME) that gets underway today in Barbados.

Apart from Barbados Prime Minister David Thompson, the other confirmed leaders are the prime ministers of Trinidad and Tobago (Patrick Manning); Antigua and Barbuda (Baldwin Spencer); St Vincent and the Grenadines (Ralph Gonsalves), and Dominica (Roosevelt Skerrit).

Guyana’s President Bharrat Jagdeo, current chairman of the 15-member community, and Jamaica’s Prime Minister Bruce Golding, who heads Caricom’s Prime Ministerial Sub-committee on External Negotiations, are expected to be represented at the ministerial level.

The primary focus of the convocation, to which stakeholders from regional private sector and labour movement organisations have been invited, will be consideration of an “audit” on progress made in implementing measures to advance the CSME, viewed as the community’s flagship project.

The answer to exactly how steadfast the member governments have been in moving the process forward to achieve a single economic space by 2015 should be forthcoming with an official statement tomorrow.

Apart from levels and extent of participation, a major concern has arisen, according to event organisers, regarding the conduct of the forum as to whether it will be ‘open’ as was originally intended, or restricted to primarily closed sessions.

Now in its 36th year as a regional economic integration movement – inaugurated at Chaguaramas, Trinidad and Tobago, in July 1973 – it was some 16 years later at the path-finding Caricom Summit of July 1989 in Grenada, that ideas and strategies unfolded, in the form of a “Grand Anse Declaration”, for the creation of a seamless regional economy with the CSME.

It was to take a further 17 years before the completion of arrangements to make the single market component a reality, starting with the historic ‘Mona Declaration’ in Jamaica in January 2006.

Since then, and despite having the benefit of clear guidelines to guide implementation efforts for the realisation of a “single economy and a single development vision” with the CSME, it is evident that Caricom has been on a “slow march” towards the realisation of a seamless regional economy.

The audit report is a voluminous document of some 700 pages, chock-full of raw data. A summary has been prepared to facilitate deliberations, but according to informed sources, it is not regarded as offering a critical assessment on the way forward for the CSME.

Sensitive issues, such as legal arrangements on regional economic investment and a relevant governance mechanism to drive the implementation process forward, would be among questions to be raised.

Participation itself may evolve as an issue among stakeholder representatives, dominated by member governments, and including the region’s umbrella private sector and labour movement organisations, as well as some from civil society agencies.

There remained “concerns” over participation from opposition parliamentary parties. The Community Secretariat has indicated that invitations were sent to the opposition parliamentary parties but no responses had been received by Wednesday evening. It was not clear whether the parties were invited as participants or observers.