(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) will pursue a regional strategy to minimize the impact of the global financial and economic crisis and is to seek greater access to funds from the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) to confront the challenges that face Caribbean economies.
“There is an urgent need for additional funds for the Region to cope with the financial crisis,” Chairman of the Community, the Hon. Dean Barrow, Prime Minister of Belize, stressed Friday, adding that the CARICOM Single Market and Economy was the platform upon which the Region would face the challenges.
At a press conference he co-hosted with the Hon. Patrick Manning, Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, the Hon. Dr. Denzil Douglas, Prime Minister of St. Kitts and Nevis and His Excellency Edwin Carrington, Secretary-General of CARICOM, Mr. Barrow said the Meeting also agreed that there was a need for a reform of the global financial architecture.
He pointed out that the situation regarding CL Financial and the Stanford Group of Companies fully engaged the Meeting. He said that it was “encouraging” that the Region would be pooling its resources to deal with the fallout from the crisis.
The Meeting, he said, received a report on the stimulus packages rolled out by individual Member States, but acknowledged that “what was done is not good enough”.
“The crisis will get worse before it gets better,” he warned, so the Region needed to do much more.
With regard to crime and security, Prime Minister Douglas told the press conference that Heads of Government had fully endorsed the proposal he presented to the meeting for a summit on crime and security in May 2009.
The Meeting also received a report which covered, among other areas, the implementation of the CARICOM Travel Card (CARIPASS), progress relating to the implementation of the ballistics information network.
Sustainable Development was another area on which the Heads of Government had full discussion. They committed their countries to play a more active and visible role in the negotiations towards the Fifteenth Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework on Climate Change scheduled for Copenhagen, Denmark in December 2009.
The Heads of Government also placed emphasis on the linkages between climate change and renewable energy and endorsed the position proposed by Guyana on promoting the Preservation of forests and on carbon credit for the Region.
