FORMER Prime Minister PJ Patterson said Caricom governments should pursue opportunities to create linkages between tourism and the creative industries to move regional integration forward, but at least one businessman believes economic integration as envisioned at the inception of the regional movement is not attainable.

Patterson, who was speaking in a recent interview called Witness to History which he shared with the Jamaica Observer in lieu of doing another interview reflecting on Caricom at 50, said the regional integration movement has ‘fallen short’ of its objectives because ‘Caricom suffers from an implementation deficit’, and said his observation is “not new message”.

“Simply put, there has not been the collective political will, and until we get that, it’s no point continuing to blame the Caricom Secretariat for what it fails to do,” Patterson said in the interview. “We have all the decisions, they have been taken, they have been repeated, and we can’t continue to take decisions with the expectation that the secretariat should do more and more, and not provide them with the financial and the human resources,” the former politician said.

However, Richard Pandohie, CEO of the Seprod Group, in a separate interview, told the Caribbean Business Report that the lack of progress on implementing the Caricom Single Market and Economy (CSME) is not only down to unwillingness on the part of leaders in the region, but also due to the overly ambitious agenda that was crafted to be achieved.

“I think some of the ambitions set by our leaders at the outset have proven to be far too ambitious and need to be reset,” Pandohie said as he outlined that plans for things like a single regional currency will never come to fruition. Still he said that while the 50-year-old integration movement, which was envisioned in the wake of the failure of the short-lived West Indies Federation, has “underachieved, it has not been a failure.”

His words come as regional leaders decided earlier this week to hurdle one of the main sticking points of Caricom — freedom of movement of people — pledging to have the free movement of all categories of people by March next year. Currently, only some categories of people are allowed to move freely within the region. The new arrangement now being considered does not extend to Haiti, whose Prime Minister Dr Ariel Henry had asked that the country be excused from the arrangement, given the humanitarian, social and political crisis in that French-speaking Caribbean country.

Caricom countries have also been tasked with establishing a regional stock exchange and a regional credit bureau within the coming months as they seek to fully implement the CSME that allows for the free movement of goods, skills, labour and services across the region.

These decisions were taken ahead of the Patterson interview, but they align with some of his ideas to get Caricom moving forward. He called for regional leaders to pay attention to issues such as climate change, food security and the creative industries — areas in which he said Caribbean people have common interests which should be exploited together and will bring the people together.

“In a very special way, the people who have done it are our musicians and our artists,” Patterson said as he highlighted a category of workers who have benefitted from Caricom. “They are all over the community. They have their followers.”

He said regional leaders should latch on to that phenomenon to drive linkages between the creative industries and the tourism sector in the region. He said traditional industries which supported the region for decades, such as banana and sugar, oil and bauxite, can no longer be depended on to drive growth and wealth.

“But what we have in abundance is talent. It is evident in music, designs, food, culture, sports and when you ally that to tourism, the linkages are very, very considerable,” he said.

Patterson proposed that stadia in the Caribbean be used to host various entertainment and sporting events, including cricket, which should be marketed to people of South Asian descent in countries such as Canada, rather than being allowed to be largely unused while waiting for the odd test match each year.

“There was a time when sugar was big. Sugar helped to make cricket what it eventually became. I see a link between tourism and not only cricket. We have top performers in athletics. We are competitive in football. I am trying to emphasise the potential for the creative industries and sports in particular, and it is also a way [to push] the movement of people, that will help to inspire the feeling, yes, Caricom matters to me.”

Yet, for Pandohie, getting Caribbean people to move around the region may be a task.

“I don’t think anybody in the region really cares about Caricom to be honest with you,” he told the Caribbean Business Report. “This is almost like an intellectual debate now, because Caricom in people’s mind, has not done much for them. They don’t see it in their day to day lives. The average citizen doesn’t care about it now, but it is something they ought to care about, and if we do it right, and if our leaders do it right, Caricom can become effective,” he added.

That effectiveness, which Pandohie spoke about, can only be achieved if regional commissions are empowered to implement decisions made by the Caricom Heads of Government when they meet each year, including “the capacity where there was a failure to do so, to impose some sanctions,” which the former Jamaica prime minister admits has been a proposal that has never found favour with a majority of the governments.

“Nobody has come up with an alternative and Caricom will never be able to achieve its full purposes until we have some arm that can ensure the implementation of decisions solemnly taken by heads of government, so as we celebrate the 50th anniversary, it should be our resolve to move forward by putting such a mechanism in place,” Patterson said.