Introduction
As far as policies promoting economic development go, I can think of few more important than greater economic integration of CARICOM. Each economy is too small to weather the global storms separately; furthermore, deeper Guyanese integration into Latin America is no panacea, although some economic cooperation with that region is necessary for strategic reasons. It is for this reason we must examine, interpret and extend Minister Winston Dookeran’s essay “New Caribbean convergence model”.
The economic growth literature has a specific interpretation of convergence. It implies that given a common technology a group of economies trading together will eventually witness the per capita income of all the countries in the said group converging in terms of per capita income. However, there can be divergence in income – meaning some stay poor while others get rich – if some economies possess superior technology and human capital while others do not.
The question remains how to achieve the convergence in average income and living standard in CARICOM. Mr Dookeran suggests this can be