UNITED CARIBBEAN: One currency for easier trade

Maat · (#1 (**permalink**))

Published on: 6/6/08

BY MICHELLE CAVE

OPAL'S BEEN GOING to Dominica, Guyana and Haiti every three months for the last 17 years. She packages fruit, makes jams and preservatives and brings them back to Barbados, stopping on the way in Guadeloupe, Grenada and Trinidad & Tobago.

She chose Guyana, Dominica and Haiti because these were the countries in the region with the biggest and cheapest supply of fruit.

Recently hearing about this CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME) thing, Opal has organised both her school and church to buy a piece of land in Guyana, Haiti and Dominica, partnering with a school and church in each. Because there is a lot more fruit to be had there and because of history, wages are a lot cheaper. This was a productive plan.

Every few months a group from the church and the school goes to Dominica, Guyana and Haiti to assist with the picking and then packaging.

They sell in Barbados, Trinidad and Grenada with no duties, but because Guadeloupe for all intents and purposes is "Europe in the Caribbean", when they go to Guadeloupe they pay a duty and they are in "France" and their product is in Europe, fetching a European price.

The more successful they get, the more organised they've become. They formed a co-operative and are seeking to expand into Suriname, where there is plenty of arable land too and fruit.

They have forecast two big problems – no one in their number speaks Dutch, and the cost of travel to Suriname is prohibitive for the number of times they want to travel per year. Haiti and Guadeloupe were fine as many in their group speak French. So they hired a tutor to teach them Dutch in the evenings, after school and after church.

It took them a while to organise the Suriname leg because the price of airfare through the region kept rising, but they hit upon the idea that if they invested in a high-speed vessel, they could ply their trade throughout the CARICOM Single Market, including Suriname.

Plan fruitful

And since Suriname and Haiti were part of CARICOM, they could operate inside it as one single economic space or, put another way, as if it was one single country, with Haiti very much wanting to be involved.

Opal's plan was really bearing fruit. Not only was the co-operative getting wealthier, but prices in the supermarkets for fruits and everything that came from fruits were getting less expensive, as it was less expensive to access them.

People were getting healthier as it was easier and easier to access fruit as opposed to something packaged that was cheaper and closer at hand. They branched out into winemaking.

The one thing they didn't foresee was the skill and ingenuity of their partners in the rest of the Caribbean.

As they worked to collect, package and market their fruit product, they found that different skills were being put in, to save on time or to make the method of packaging better, because though we are one Caribbean people, we have different influences that when put together to accomplish something, often create something superior and even more widely appreciated.

From the early days when Opal would be going up the islands alone, the big hassle was always transferring money. With the coming of CSME, something she could see as workable: people and produce moving freely, what she thought was really needed, was one currency. That would make life a lot easier.

Because she was banking first only in Barbados, it wasn't so much of a challenge then, but as they expanded, they were banking in Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada, Dominica, Haiti and Suriname.

They saw the value of the whole Caribbean having one currency just like the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States, or Europe, or the West African Monetary and Economic Union.

It would certainly make life a lot easier.

The Nation Newspaper | UNITED CARIBBEAN: One currency for easier trade

JustPassing · (#2 (**permalink**))

I agree and it will do people in the West Indies (especially Jamacia) good to not rely on the power of the US currency.

Good Post