Resource transfer to Latin America and the Caribbean was negative throughout the eighties. Debt-forgiveness would benefit not only the debtor countries, however. Lending countries and institutions would also stand to gain.

While the integration process in the Caribbean Community and Common Market (Caricom) has only been in force for a few years, it is, in the author’s view, clear that the narrow free trade approach used so far will not be able to deal with the widening gap between the better-off and the less...