ECLAC estimates this general trend will improve in 2011, with a predicted 0.5 percent decline. However, it also says that recovery will vary from country to country and estimates the highest possible "modest expansion" in any country in 2011 will be 2.2 percent.

Recovery in most regional states is tied to recovery in the UK and other European states, as well as a quicker pace of recovery in the USA.

ECLAC is concerned, however, that slow growth can threaten achievement of United Nation's Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for poverty eradication, universal primary education and improving maternal health in the Caribbean.

Caribbean analysts complain that in some cases, countries boast high liquidity, but don't convert those resources into domestic loans. They point to Trinidad & Tobago, where reserves increased by over 22 percent in mid-2010 as compared to one year earlier, but recorded only 2 percent outstanding loans over the same period.

One sure start to improving their economic relations, the Caribbean states have been told, is to do more business with each other, by allowing regional citizens and companies more freedom to operate across the territories.

They agreed to take that tough medicine by agreeing to the establishment of the Caricom Single Market and Economy (CSME) in several years ago.

However, most Caribbean leaders have been slow in taking this particular dosage of economic medicine, most bowing to domestic pressure to protect smaller local industries afraid of being swallowed up or cast aside by the region's larger businesses and investors.

To date, the CSME hasn't come into force because not enough governments have ratified the treaty in their national parliaments. But one development on the immediate horizon at the sub-regional level should serve as a sure bang start for the CSME

One week ahead of the Barbados search conference – on January 21 – the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) is set to launch an Economic Union, which they agreed to in St. Lucia in June 2010.

The OECS comprises the six smallest independent member-states of Caricom (Antigua & Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St Kitts & Nevis, St. Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines) and the Economic Union will allow citizens of each member-state to travel to, set up shop and do business in any or each member-state.

Any four of the six OECS member-states can ratify the Economic Union Treaty to enforce it across the board. Antigua & Barbuda became the first and only OECS member-state to ratify it at the end of December 2010.

With two weeks to go and no other intended ratifications yet announced – and with the OECS leaders also having earlier committed to the CSME – there are understandable fears that the deadline may not be met.

However, Director General of the St. Lucia-based OECS Secretariat, Dr Len Ishmael, says she does not envisage a problem with the leaders taking this particular prescribed medicine.

She's been reminding Caribbean journalists that the January 21, 2010 deadline for the ratification of the OECS Economic Union Treaty "was set by the six leaders themselves."

The author is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit:

http://www.ccgp-fushun.com/opinion/node_7107878.htm

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