Caricom is facing some of its most serious financial challenges to date, raising concerns that the commitment of Caricom's 14 member states to regional integration could falter. The global financial crisis hit Caricom member states particularly hard and many, facing fiscal crises at home, are not making their contributions as agreed. Jamaica has reportedly had to cut its payments to regional organisations under fiscal austerity measures agreed with the IMF in early 2010. At the 27th meeting of the Community Council, held in Guyana on January 17th, the approval of the 2011 budget was deferred and the Caricom Secretariat was asked to undertake further cost-cutting measures and present a smaller budget for approval. Caricom's budget has been frozen at US$18m for the last three fiscal years as it has attempted to contain costs, but the financial challenges facing the regional grouping continue to be described by the Secretariat as "severe". Although it was reported in the regional press that job cuts are looming, this was denied by the Secretariat, which directly employs around 200 staff, in a statement in early February. It appears more likely that the contracts of some employees who are past the Secretariat's official retirement age of 60 (of which there are significant numbers) may not be renewed or staff may be asked to take pay reductions in an attempt to maintain current staffing levels. Similar to the recently-retired secretary-general, Edwin Carrington-who served in his post for 18 years and resigned in 2010 at the age of 72-there are many staff members who have passed retirement age but have not been required to resign their posts. Although the political power of this demographic within the institution cannot be underestimated, it will grow increasingly harder to justify the renewal of their contracts as financial pressures continue to rise and cuts are made in other areas. Caricom is also likely to cut back on its large travel budget by relying more on videoconferencing and less on regional meetings where participants need to be flown in from as many as 14 countries.

The need for renewed cost-cutting comes at a time when the Secretariat is seeking a new leader following the resignation of Mr Carrington at the end of 2010. The selection process has also come under intense public criticism, mainly owing to its lack of transparency. A ten-member search committee-assigned to manage the succession process and chaired by Barbados's minister of foreign affairs, Maxine McLean-in February determined that none of the five candidates put forward by the governments of Belize, Dominica, Saint Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines and Suriname "met the required appointment criteria". However, critics argue that it is unclear what those appointment criteria actually are, with no public advertisement for the post, no job description, no information about the composition of the search committee nor any official report on how the search has been conducted so far. Lolita Applewhaite, a Barbadian, will continue to act as secretary-general pending the selection and appointment of a new secretary-general at some point in 2011.