Don’t give up! – Single currency in region still worth pursuing

A FORMER Trinidad and Tobago Central Bank official says that creating a single currency within CARICOM is still an important ideal to pursue.

However, Dr. Shelton Nicholls, former Deputy Governor for Policy and Research of the Central Bank of the twin-island republic, said that he does not think that the current economic conditions within the region are going to permit that process to happen easily.

Dr. Shelton Nicholls

“There are very different views about the question of pegging a currency versus having a currency and until I think we can solve that problem. I don’t think we would be able to really make much advances on this issue...It is a very difficult area for discussion and I think the views would still continue to exist in the region about having different currency arrangements,” he said.

To that end, Dr. Nicholls contended that until the region gets serious and embarks on a production integration drive and developing various markets, the CARICOM member states will not adopt a common currency. In fact, he suggested that this may only be pursued when there are no more alternatives available, forcing that level of integration to take place.

“I am very passionate and emotional about this, because every time I travel to Suriname, or Guyana, or Belize and I just see vast tracts of land and under-utilised resources there doing nothing. It really affects me...It just means that we have not taken the time to organise our production structures in any way. We talk about it, but we don’t discuss it, we don’t actively pursue it and until we start doing those things, getting the production integration in place, seeing the opportunities [and] mobilising our internal support to do it, we are going to land behind,” he maintained.


With that in mind, the economist said that CARICOM must really get going as it relates to regional integration. He said that there have been so many starts and stops as it relates to regional integration, that sometimes we lose hope that it can provide us with the impetus needed to take our countries forward.

“There is a lot of reform that has to take place with the CARICOM Secretariat and the whole process of integration in the region and I think it is something that we have to start with urgently. We’ve spent a lot of our time looking at a number of organisational issues in regional integration, maybe issues of macro-economic stability, [but] we have not used the integration movement to really develop products to diversify; to even raise long-term financing for the region in a sustainable way,” he said.

Dr. Nicholls said that regionalism is a key part of that strategy and we must give the process time to succeed at the political level and the national level. He warned that unless efforts are made to do these things, we will continue on a path to economic damnation. (JRT)