As Cari­com lead­ers meet in Bar­ba­dos this week for their an­nu­al Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing, they will bid farewell to long­time col­league Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, who has been lead spokesman on se­cu­ri­ty mat­ters with­in the re­gion­al qua­si-cab­i­net, and T&T's head of del­e­ga­tion at these meet­ings for the past ten years.

One of his last­ing lega­cies has been his con­tri­bu­tion as chair­man of Cari­com's Sub-com­mit­tee on West In­dies Crick­et to the process of gov­er­nance re­form with­in Crick­et West In­dies (CWI). This is ex­pect­ed to guide the ad­min­is­tra­tive de­vel­op­ment of the re­gion­al game for years to come.

Dr Row­ley has al­so been at the fore­front of re­gion­al ef­forts - with lim­it­ed suc­cess to date - to stem the wor­ry­ing crime men­ace.

In April 2023, un­der his stew­ard­ship, T&T host­ed the first 'Re­gion­al Sym­po­sium Ad­dress­ing Crime and Vi­o­lence As A Pub­lic Health Is­sue', with a fol­low-up con­fer­ence tak­ing place in Guyana last year.

How­ev­er, co­in­cid­ing with Dr Row­ley's de­par­ture are some very im­por­tant glob­al shifts, which present a unique op­por­tu­ni­ty for Cari­com to be­gin repo­si­tion­ing it­self and its re­liance on for­eign sources of aid.

For ex­am­ple, the shift­ing stance of the Unit­ed States as it per­tains to the re­gion it­self, as well as with re­spect to the war in Ukraine and Eu­rope's feel­ing of iso­la­tion in the re­cent talks with Rus­sia, make it un­cer­tain where things are head­ed geopo­lit­i­cal­ly. There will be im­pacts on the Caribbean, whether it is from the stand­point of threat­ened de­por­ta­tions, food se­cu­ri­ty or the price of oil and gas.

This is the mo­ment where Cari­com must shift gears. For years, it has spo­ken about look­ing more in­ward­ly, now it must move de­lib­er­ate­ly and with pur­pose.

Prime Min­is­ter-des­ig­nate Stu­art Young has at­tend­ed many in­ter­na­tion­al meet­ings as Row­ley's right hand as Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter and this coun­try's En­er­gy Min­is­ter. He would have un­doubt­ed­ly gath­ered ex­pe­ri­ence in han­dling these in­ter­na­tion­al meet­ings. Now, as the one set to re­place PM Row­ley in the com­ing weeks, Mr Young will be tasked with de­riv­ing new ben­e­fits for T&T out of its par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas, as well as en­sur­ing there are ready an­swers to the chal­lenges posed on a geo-po­lit­i­cal scale.

How the prime min­is­ter-in-wait­ing goes about all of this will be very im­por­tant.

With T&T's dwin­dling nat­ur­al gas re­sources and the emer­gence of Guyana as a new re­gion­al en­er­gy pow­er­house, T&T will need to look se­ri­ous­ly at its over­all eco­nom­ic port­fo­lio, with a view to di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and en­sur­ing that oth­er sec­tors, such as man­u­fac­tur­ing, are put to best use.

The ques­tion is do we con­tin­ue pro­duc­ing food and bev­er­ages that we are strong at, or do we look to de­vel­op niche ar­eas in the petro­chem­i­cal field for in­stance?

While much of this should be dri­ven by the pri­vate sec­tor, Gov­ern­ment must cre­ate the nec­es­sary en­abling en­vi­ron­ment to al­low busi­ness­es to reach as many Caribbean and in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets as pos­si­ble with their prod­ucts and ser­vices. This is an area in which T&T should con­tin­ue to main­tain its cur­rent trade ad­van­tage with­in the Cari­com re­gion.

US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump's tar­iffs should fur­ther en­cour­age T&T and in­deed all of Cari­com to put ur­gent thought in­to al­ter­na­tive trade part­ner­ships.

We ea­ger­ly look to see what emerges from this week's Bridgetown sum­mit on this.