Government Procurement Imperatives and Micro-economies in the OECS Sub-region

Abstract

Economic governance at the dawn of the 21st  Century is intimately linked to facilitating the generic process of globalization. However, the employ of economic governance imperatives is at best an exercise in futility if they do not also embrace regulatory mechanisms that work to facilitate the growth of national economies. Notwithstanding this, in an era of the rapid proliferation of globalization modalities and processes, national economic development is significantly compromised without robust national involvement in regional, hemispheric and multilateral trade. Intimate involvement in regional, hemispheric and multilateral trade agreements is essential to facilitate trade liberalization and integration imperatives and the more fundamental objectives of socio-economic transformation. This notwithstanding, the micro-economies of the Caribbean have remained on the fringes of the hemispheric and multilateral trade architecture and necessarily so continue to be marginalized in the globalization process at large.

Many of these micro-economies have been slow to assiduously and aggressively participate in the hemispheric and multilateral trade architecture. This has broad and acute implications for benefits to accrue and subsequently filter down from the trading system to these economies. The article provides a focused analysis of government procurement issues regionally, hemispherically and internationally. It seeks to articulate Caribbean micro-economies' involvement, at large, in such a trade-related area.