| CARICOM seeks to strengthen ties |
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| Sunday, 11 January 2009 11:30 | |||
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BELMOPAN, Belize – The chairman of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), Dean Barrow, says he intends to use his six-month stint at the helm of the 15-member grouping to forge closer relations with Central America. In a New Year’s address delivered on Monday, Barrow, who is also the Prime Minister of Belize, said it was significant that he was extending greetings from his own country in Central America which is a "reminder of the reach and scope of our community, the fact that we include portions of continents and sub continents, that we are Latin American as well as Caribbean. "This feature of being protean is important. The cast net nature of the physical locations of our individual countries is part of our collective advantage. It is what gives us our ready-made platform for the construction of the necessary ties with the various regions and sub regions. "And Belize certainly intends to use its position as CARICOM Chairman and a member of the Central American Integration System to enhance the alliance between the two organisations," he said. Barrow said that in view of the current global circumstances, "it has to be clearer than ever that going it alone is not an option for any small country, or any one agglomeration of small countries. "The vision of our CARICOM leaders twenty years ago to set us the goal of a Single Market and Economy has been more than validated by events. And it is timely to recognise now the debt of gratitude we owe to the giants of 1989. "Of course, we in the Caribbean have a long history of producing thinkers and seers and visionaries. But we also produce more than our share of doubters. I do not say this slightingly, but rather in tribute to the questioning, rambunctious, even sometimes contrarian nature of our democracy. "Our minutely analytical public discourses, our often scathingly sceptical debates, are as they should be. But there does come a time when consensus must prevail, when talk must give way to action. That time, I want to suggest to all citizens of the Community, is now. "We are called urgently, in the roiled conditions of the global convulsion, to first of all consolidate the operations of the single market. Thereafter we must proceed with all deliberate haste, always of course ensuring special treatment for the most vulnerable among us, to the establishment of the Single Economy." Barrow said that to suggest that there was a cogent need for a recommitment to this particular end, is not to discount the progress already made. He noted that in addition to the continued free movement of goods, there was now the free movement of capital and of service and that last year had seen to the establishment of two other key elements of the CSME: the Competition Commission and the CARICOM Development Fund. "Also, the categories of free movement of skills have been enlarged to comprise now university graduates, media workers, nurses, non-graduate teachers and artisans," he said, adding that in addition to world circumstances there were particular imperatives for the Community to enhance its competitiveness and strengthen its internal arrangements. "One such is the Economic Partnership Agreement signed last year between the Community and the European Union; and another is the impending negotiations with Canada for a Trade and Development Agreement. "We have to be ready to confront the challenges and exploit the opportunities that these developments bring. And utilizing them as platforms to maximize advantage and minimize disadvantage, will especially require the involvement of the private sector and labour. This is a complex enterprise on which we are embarked, a fraught departure requiring unity of purpose and safeness of hands." Barrow said that institutionally, a critical dimension of the new approach will be the need for CARICOM to bring closure to the long running review of its governance structure. "As Lead Head of Government for Justice and Governance in the quasi-cabinet of CARICOM, I would like to see finalisation of the new apparatuses that would streamline decision-making and accelerate implementation."
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| Last Updated on Sunday, 11 January 2009 11:34 |
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