Working Paper Series: Special Edition of 2016 to 2018 Interns

Economic Union. 20 Some of the core objectives of the Treaty included the creation of a single and economic space, harmonious development of economic activities, and sustained economic and social progress and cohesion. 21 3.1 Economic Performance The ECCU has endured volatile growth performance over the last 40 years. Exogenous shocks such as natural disasters, international crises and disbandment of trade agreements have all affected the performance of the economies.. In fact, ECCU’s growth performance in the early 1970s and 1980s were perhaps the best over the last 40 years achieving growth rates as high as 18.6 per cent in 1980 (see Chart 1). This was the case as the region enjoyed preferential trade arrangements for their booming agriculture products and inflows of foreign aid. However, the region has been victim of adverse exogenous shocks such as the dismantling of preferential trading, terms of trade shocks, reduction in foreign aid and global economic crises; see Schipke, Cebotari and Thacker (2013). During the 1990s, the region embraced structural changes forced by the exogenous shocks it faced; as such, the economic performance started to decline, Thacker et al. (2012). Around the early 2000 the region’s economic performance started picking up again but was short lived due to the drop in economic activity after the ICC World Cup and the 2008/09 global financial crises.

20 The Treaty set out the legal parameters for which the single market is to be bolstered. It required each participating member state to co-ordinate and harmonize in areas of trade policies, monetary policies, immigration and foreign policy. The Treaty goes further to outline the structure for which free movement of persons should take place while explicitly noting the abolition of any discriminatory actions conducted by any member state against differing nationalities. 21 The ECCU uses the Eastern Currency Dollar which is pegged to the United States of America Dollar $2.70 EC = $1 USD since 1976. The Eastern Caribbean Central Bank is the monetary authority for this Union.

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