CSME stands for CARICOM Single Market & Economy.
The CSME Unit of CARICOM is the impementation office which assists the Member States in fulfilling the requirements of the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas.
The Caribbean Free Trade Area (CARIFTA) served as the governing body to remove tariffs and other barriers to intra-regional trade in Goods. In 1973, the CARIFTA agreement was deepened through the signing of The Treaty of Chaguaramas in Guyana. The Treaty included provisions to create a Common Market within the Caribbean region.
Following from this treaty, in 1989 at Grande Anse, Grenada, the CARICOM Heads of Government transformed the Common Market into the Single Market and Single Economy formally named the Caribbean Single Market and Economy- CSME. By 2002, the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas was revised and updated to the removal of existing barriers of trade and to establish a Single Market space which included services, capital, technology, and the free movement of skilled professionals.
The CSME seeks to implement provisions for the removal of trade and professional restrictions. These provisions facilitate the right to establishment businesses, to provide regional services, the free movement of capital and the coordination of economic policies. In the ensuing years, some Caribbean economies, under the auspices of multilateral lending institutions, implemented structural adjustment programmes having at their core, programmes of economic, financial and trade liberalisation that far exceeded their commitments as expressed in the Treaty of Chaguaramas. The fundamental aspects of CSME are as following:
- Consumer Affairs
- Competition Policy
- Social Security
- Contingent Rights
- Immigration Arrangements for Free Movement of Persons
- Administrative Arrangements for Commercial Establishment
- Government Procurement
- Trade and Competitiveness in CARICOM
