Fairman: CARICOM must practice what it preaches on trade

Dave Fairman, vice-president of Best Dressed Chicken, says the push by the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) for greater regional integration will remain difficult unless member states address barriers to the movement of people and goods.

Fairman said the region must move beyond promoting intra-regional trade as a policy goal and take practical steps to make it work.

“I think we need to stick to what we preach. So we preach CARICOM, we preach this intra-regional trade first, even the free movement of people, which we're still not there,” he told delegates on Wednesday at the 20th Caribbean Week of Agriculture conference in Trelawny.