Madame Chair, Deputy Prime Minister of Barbados
Honourable Ministers
Director-General, RNM
Distinguished Delegates
Assistant Secretaries General
And Members of Staff of the Secretariat
Members of the Media
Ladies and Gentlemen
As Secretary-General of the Caribbean Community, the pleasurable task is mine this morning to welcome you all to the 14th Meeting of the Council for Trade and Economic Development (COTED). I especially extend a warm and most hearty welcome to the delegation of Montserrat, whose Minister will preside over this Meeting. This is a source of great joy to us as it has been sometime now since this member of the CARICOM family has been able to join us for these deliberations. I had a special welcome to the new Honourable Minister of Suriname, who replaces his colleague so tragically lost to us last September, and whom we remember with deep emotional recollection.
Honourable Ministers, ladies and gentlemen, at this first Ministerial Council session for 2003, I would like to extend to everyone the very best wishes for the New Year. I am looking forward to a most productive and decisive year as befits the 30th Anniversary of our Caribbean Community. It is therefore my fervent hope that this Meeting will set the tone for this historic year with its focus, productivity and decisiveness.
Honourable Ministers I would like us to bear in mind one key word as today we begin this series of Ministerial sessions, culminating in 14 days time with the 14th Inter-Sessional Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government. That word simply put is action.
No one appreciates more than I do, the necessity to ensure that intra-regional arrangements and institutions are founded on secure and transparent agreements. Like everyone else around this table, I am also cognizant of the fact that no country willingly enters into any arrangement without attempting to secure its best interests.
The present reality remains however, that having negotiated, signed and in some cases ratified, agreements, the Caribbean Community is today still short of the goals it has set itself towards bringing the Single Market and Economy into operation.
The essence of our Caribbean Community is that it cannot exist without the full and active involvement of all its Member States. Whatever initiatives are being pursued must be agreed to by all our Member States and it therefore is incumbent on them all to ensure that the requisite steps are taken to guarantee their domestic implementation. Involvement does not end with decision-making – but with implementation.
Madame Chair, Ladies and Gentlemen, there can be no more glaring evidence of our shortcomings than an issue that strikes at the very heart of Community. Community is nothing if not a co-mingling of peoples and with this clearly in mind in July 1995 in this very room, our Heads of Government at their 16th Meeting agreed, and I quote:
“as a first step towards facilitating the free movement of skilled persons among Member States, to implement with effect from 1 January 1996, the free movement of CARICOM Nationals who are University graduates, subject to the acceptability of their credentials by the Member State concerned.”
Further at its 17th Meeting at Bridgetown, Barbados, in 1996, the Conference agreed, and I quote again:
“all Member States should conclude the arrangements for providing for the facilitation of travel and the free movement of university graduates prior to the next Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government:
free movement should be extended to cover artistes, sportspersons, musicians and media workers as early as possible.”
Today almost eight years since that first decision, and even with a final adjustment last year to see this measure in force by December 31, 2002, we are still awaiting its full implementation. And that decision eight years ago was “as a first step.”
This is just one example of our failure to match decision with implementation and promise with practice. I implore you Honourable Ministers, in this our 30th Anniversary year, let COTED set an example of keeping faith with the decisions it takes.
Over the next two days, items relating to the implementation of the Single Market and Economy will no doubt take centre stage but there are other pressing matters with which this meeting will be concerned. For example , no one will be unaware of the difficulties with which our Aviation industry is faced which were brought starkly into the spotlight earlier this week. Transportation is a critical component in the co-mingling of peoples no less than it is for the trade in goods and therefore warrants significant attention.
Key external economic and trade relations are also on the agenda. In fact, the world today seems to be a never ending round of negotiations whether it is at the multi-lateral level for us of the World Trade Organisation or the Free Trade Area of the Americas or at the bilateral level with Costa Rica, or Canada. We must therefore equip our Regional Negotiating Machinery with the capacity to defend our interests and advance our ambitions in those arenas.
Whatever partnerships we forge in those arenas must however be anchored upon the foundations we build internally in our Single market and Economy or we may well find ourselves adrift in that turbulent sea or as my mentor the late William Demas used to say that jungle of international relations. And how right he would be if he were here today, as we confront a world teetering on the brink of war, a neighbour locked in a bitter internal conflict, both of which are likely to impact negatively on our Community, and not only in regard to the price of oil and our tourism.
Honourable Ministers, Distinguished Representatives, Ladies and Gentlemen, it is against this background that it has fallen to COTED to start this key round of Community Meetings, and I would like to believe that at the end of the series of meetings in Trinidad and Tobago on February 15, the people of our Community would be able to look back and say that this, the 14th Meeting of the Community’s Council for Trade and Economic Development, did truly set the tone for an action-oriented 30th Anniversary of their Community.
It is in our hands.
I thank you.
