FCG Working Papers

The Missing Middle: Firms, Diaspora, and the Unfinished Architecture of Caribbean Integration

Robert D. Forrester, Forrester Consulting Group0009-0004-3323-6981

July 2026 (first circulation: October 2026)

Abstract

The CARICOM Single Market and Economy guarantees free movement of capital and the right of establishment, yet three decades on these rights remain substantially unexercised by Caribbean-owned firms. This paper argues the cause is neither political will nor treaty design but the near-absence of firms capable of exercising them: the “missing middle”, defined by the Caribbean Development Bank’s medium-enterprise classification. Integrating the Caribbean structuralist tradition, the mainstream economics of firm growth, and the political economy of collective action, the paper traces the missing middle to a historical sequence — plantation economy, industrialisation by invitation, liberalisation — and explains its persistence through concentrated incumbent interests. Guyana’s Local Content Act dispute and the diaspora’s two-channel engagement pattern supply case evidence. The paper proposes a layered institutional response: regional growth finance, harmonised registration, succession support, activation of CARICOM’s dormant competition regime, an Article 31-consistent local content template, and a capture-resistant diaspora institution.

Keywords

CARICOM, CSME, missing middle, firm growth, Local Content Act, regional integration, Caribbean development economics