(CARICOM Secretariat, Georgetown, Guyana) Six countries used the opportunity of the recently concluded XVIII Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community to sign agreements bolstering the Integration Movement.
The Bahamas and Montserrat signed Protocol I, the first in a series of amendments to the Treaty of Chaguaramas, which established the Caribbean Community and Common Market. With Montserrat’s signature on July 4, 1997, the Protocol came into force provisionally.
The twelve other members of CARICOM had signed the Protocol at the Eighth Intersessional Meeting of the Heads of Government in Antigua last February. This Protocol governs the organs and institutions of the Community and regulates the voting procedures.
On July 2, 1997, St Vincent and the Grenadines became the seventh Member State to sign the CARICOM Agreement on Social Security. The agreement provides for the transfer of a Community citizen’s social security benefits from one Member State to another should that citizen choose to take advantage of the right to live and work as enshrined in the legislation covering the free movement of skills.
The Social Security Agreement came into force earlier this year with the third ratification.
Also in Montego Bay, Jamaica, where the conference was held, three countries, Antigua and Barbuda, Guyana and St Kitts and Nevis signed the agreement on Privileges and Immunities for representatives of the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC).
The CARICOM Secretariat and the Corporacion Andino Fomento (CAF) also signed a Memorandum of Understanding with respect to the staging of a conference on doing business between CARICOM and Andean Pact countries. This $65,000 (US) project is the first in a series under an agreement signed between the two organisations in April 1996.
