There has been surprisingly little public response to last week's announcement in Venezuela of Dominica's intention to join the Bolivaria for the Americas, the trade and economic cooperation grouping being promoted by Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez and better known by its Spanish acronym ALBA.

The declaration of Dominica's intent as well as a proposal by the Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA to build an oil refinery in the Eastern Caribbean island was clearly the major outcome of last week's official visit to Caracas by Dominica's Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerritt.

Bringing a new member to ALBA, which now comprises Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and Bolivia, Chávez says, will strengthen the organisation "as a new geopolitical space".

Prime Minister Skerritt spoke broadly of strengthened relations with Venezuela, which of itself is not a bad thing. Indeed, we support good neighbourliness in the region and particularly endorse the special relations that Caribbean Community (Caricom) countries have long enjoyed with Venezuela.

That relationship has brought benefits to the Caribbean, not least of which has been President Chávez's PetroCaribe energy initiative, under which Caracas provides deep, long-term, low-interest credit on the oil it sells to several Caribbean and Central American countries. In a period of high oil prices, the absence of PetroCaribe would severely weaken the trade and balance of payments accounts of several Caribbean countries and deepen their economic problems.

Skerritt, more than most, faces this issue. His country has recently been through a major fiscal crisis, which is the catalyst for Caricom to create a regional economic stabilisation fund.

The foregoing notwithstanding, we would be surprised if, as appears to be Skerritt's intent, Dominica were to make a unilateral decision to join ALBA, which Chávez hopes to develop as a counterfoil to United States (U.S.) trade initiatives in this hemisphere.

When Chávez first launched his ALBA initiative, the American project was the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), a grand scheme for a single free trade space of North and South America and the Caribbean. That project has, largely, atrophied and the Americans have been negotiating bilateral trade deals in smaller regional pacts, like the ones with Central America and the Dominican Republic.

Significantly, though, in the FTAA talks the Caricom countries, of which Dominica is one, negotiated as a bloc, as they did with the European Union for a regional Economic Partnership Agreement. Indeed, Caricom is no mere trade group; it is, by treaty, a single market which is to evolve into a single economy. Moreover, Caricom has evolved into a political organisation with a largely synchronised foreign policy.

On the trade and economic side, no Caricom member can, or is expected to, enter into arrangements with third parties that afford these parties benefits not enjoyed by Caricom partners. Even if that would not be the case with Dominica's proposed ALBA membership, we would assume that Caricom, as a group, would have a stake as such in the geopolitical consequences to the accession.

Part of the strength of Caricom is, of course, the degree of insulation it helps to provide these small nations from the hostile buffeting of the global environment. Dominica would be advised to act in concert with its community partners.