BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, CMC – Former Jamaica prime minister Edward Seaga Monday gave failing grades to the Caribbean Community (CARICOM)Single Market and Economy (CSME) and the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) negotiated between the European Union and the Caribbean Forum (CARIFORUM).

"The only real hope for the Caribbean people to be able to export to the EPA countries with whom they would be in partnership would be to focus on industries that have an indigenous resource base," Seaga told the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC) in a telephone interview from his office in Kingston.

"By industries I am using it in the broader sense and that includes agriculture, so that in effect agriculture having indigenous raw materials would be the best way to penetrate the EPA market."

Seaga said that while his suggestions may seem contradictory because of the problems the Caribbean faced with marketing bananas and sugar to those countries, he was referring to non-traditional crops.

The former prime minister said that the entire exercise leading up to the EPA being initialled last December was carried out in "less than an open fashion" and that Caribbean people are only now knowing about some of the features.

Caribbean government leaders who met in Antigua earlier this month said many of them had expressed a readiness to sign the accord on either July 30 or August 30.

CARICOM Chairman Baldwin Spencer said that the regional leaders had “fully debated" the EPA during their summit taking "quite some time examining the pros and cons".

"We recognise that there were issues involved but I think in the final analysis we were able to arrive at a position which seeks to ensure that the process continues and that CARICOM will sign on the EPA with certain thoughts, in terms of ensuring that commitments will remain intact,” said Spencer, who is also the prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda.

Seaga told CMC that there were not many successes to CARICOM after years of trying to forge an integration movement.

"It has tried to set up a Caribbean Single Market and Economy which would have been the means of increasing exports in all of the participating countries…but it turns out that this will not be so at all," Seaga said.

Regional governments regard the CSME, that allows for the free movement of goods, services, skills and labour across the region, as a suitable response to the changing global environment that has resulted in a loss of preferential treatment for a number of their products sold on the world market.

But Seaga, a senior research fellow at the Mona Campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI), said that Caribbean governments have so far failed in their attempt to forge a single currency which he views as “the mainstay of the economic part of the CSME”.

“So that has now been left off and we're talking about a Caribbean Single Market but this Caribbean Single Market depends on which countries have exportable goods," he said.

Seaga said that the Caribbean Single Market as it now stands holds no good prospects for the future.

"Coming together doesn't mean anything. Coming together to do what, what do you have to market?" the former leader questioned.

"There are no products that are being produced in the Caribbean region, except possibly in Trinidad and to a certain small extent in Barbados, which are competitive enough and unique enough to be marketed in Europe. We can't even market to each other because we just don't have that capacity,” Seaga said.

CMC/db/pr/08