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REMARKS BY EDWIN W. CARRINGTON, SECRETARY-GENERAL, CARIBBEAN COMMUNITY, AT THE INAUGURATION OF THE CARIBBEAN REGIONAL TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE CENTRE (CARTAC), 5 NOVEMBER 2001, BRIDGETOWN, BARBADOS

Honourable Prime Ministers of Barbados, Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines
Honourable Ministers of Finance
Other Honourable Ministers
The Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
Director of the Regional Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean of the UNDP,
Vice-president of the Americas Branch of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA)
The President of the Caribbean Development Bank
Dr. Marion Williams, Governor of the Barbados Central Bank, and other Central Bank Governors
Other High-level Officials
Distinguished Guests
Ladies and Gentlemen

Mine is the pleasant task this morning of chairing this inauguration ceremony of the Caribbean Regional Technical Assistance Centre (CARTAC). It is an honour for which, as Secretary-General of the Caribbean Community, I am deeply appreciative in light of the important role which CARTAC is designed to play in the next phase of Caribbean development.

When Heads of Government accepted the proposal for the establishment of this Centre in the Caribbean, they did so against the background that policies and programmes to stimulate national and regional development require significantly higher levels of performance of the economies in a number of areas including fiscal, monetary and financial. Underpinning these is the need for improving the economic statistical base, as quality information is vital to facilitate the discriminating decisions necessary, not only for assessing the impact on the Region of the various measures being adopted for the closer integration of the Region into a Single Market and Economy – the route through which the Region expects to accelerate growth and development – but also for ensuring the more effective integration of the Region into the hemispheric and global economies.

CARTAC, through its advisory and training functions, is expected to help us fill, on a sustainable basis, a vital gap in our present regional institutional capacity.

As a regional body, CARTAC’s technical advice and training in the area of public expenditure management, tax and customs administration, financial sector management, and in the compilation of economic statistics, will cover areas vital to the Region’s development. This is extremely timely as the Region is involved in the process of reducing and even removing customs tariffs in relation to all trade, and must therefore find alternative revenue-raising mechanisms. At the same time, financial sector management assumes enhanced importance in the face of the higher standards being demanded of our off- and onshore financial sectors, and in the fight against money laundering and terrorism, especially in this post-September 11 era.

In the area of economic statistics, there is a critical need for satisfactory databases for services which now comprise more than half the gross domestic product of our economies and for which present databases are particularly weak.

As regards country coverage, it is important and appropriate in a context where regional integration remains the priority quest of the people’s of the Region, that CARTAC will cover all Member States and Associate Member States of the Caribbean Community.

The institutional arrangements for the operation of the Centre appear quite satisfactory. A management structure comprising, as it does, a Steering Committee made up of officials of the participating governments, regional institutions, the IMF and the UNDP, and annual meetings of a Review Committee comprising the IMF, the UNDP, representatives of participating countries and of donors, ought to be able to guide this body on the path necessary to ensure its maximum contribution to the Region. Noting that the Steering Committee would be working closely with other technical assistance providers strengthens that confidence.

The arrangements for the funding of CARTAC suggest a recognition of the Region’s limited financial capacity and of the importance of external international financial support.

Finally, in design and remit, the emphasis placed on the needs of the smaller and less developed of the Region’s economies points the Centre in the right direction.

With these many desirable features, with the quality of guidance being provided to this body, and with the moment being most propitious, I, as Secretary-general of the Caribbean Community, welcome most warmly the establishment of the Caribbean Regional Technical Assistance Centre (CARTAC). I congratulate and thank all those whose vision and hard work led to its establishment.

In that regard, I recall an exchange on 8 May in the very late afternoon with the Honourable Prime Minister of Barbados, then Chairman of CARICOM. He was returning to Guyana from Suriname, having led a most successful but exhausting two-day mission to Suriname. It was quite late, but I ventured to raise with him the desirability of the signing of the CARTAC Project Document that evening. Without hesitation he said to me “Mr. Secretary-General, I told you before, I am here to work, if there is more work to be done, let us so proceed.” The rest is history.

I am particularly pleased to now invite the Honourable Prime Minister of Barbados, the Rt. Hon. Owen S. Arthur, to address us as there is more work to be done on this 5th November 2001 morning. Mr. Prime Minister.

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