‘Let’s meet’

If the Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME) is to be successful some elements of it need to be restructured, Prime Minister Mia Mottley declared tonight.

And one of the things she wants to see quickly addressed is the regularity of meetings by her fellow CARICOM leaders.

Speaking during a town hall meeting – CSME – What’s in it for me – at the Errol Barrow Centre for the Creative Imagination, Mottley, who is the CARICOM head of Government responsible for the CSME, said CARICOM leaders were simply not meeting often enough to discuss critical issues.

Mottley said: “In Europe, maybe because of Brexit we’ve seen it, but almost every two or three weeks the Heads of Government of the Europe Union are meeting, but we believe that a smaller group of people needs to meet only twice a year.

“And what happens in between the two meetings then depends on what happens at the sub-committee level or potentially if there is a crisis.

“That in my view has to change if we are going to bring our movement into fully the third decade of the 21st century, which in fact starts in less than 60 days.

“Unless we quicken the pace of discussion and implementation we are going to marginalize the region without even realizing it.”

She maintained that the CSME was important for the region’s success, as there was “power in unity”.

The Prime Minister said what could be achieved as a regional unit was far greater than what could be achieved by individual states.

“Why do we believe that we must continue to do things singularly without understanding that the power of unity is not only that of the unions to benefit from, but it is for the Caribbean people who more than any other region reflect people from every civilization on this earth, every race on this earth, and we have come together to fashion a civilization that is blended and has a greater level of creativity without the bloodshed that other regions in the world have seen,” Mottley said.

She also pointed to Chapter 7 of the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas, the CARICOM treaty, which she maintained was extremely important to the sustainability of the CSME.

Mottley said among one of the proposed changes was to change the statute establishing the CARICOM Development Fund and create instead a Growth and Resilience Fund.

The Prime Minister declared: “Short answer, I think that we have to be serious about restructuring aspects of the CARICOM Secretariat and being able to have the Secretariat function in a 21st century, not only with more regular meetings of Heads of Government or of officers, the political will comes in making sure that people come to the meetings whether flying or by Skype because that allows us to talk every week if we wanted to.

“We need to be able to restructure the governance framework of the Secretariat to allow it to be more effective in meeting our individual domestic needs.”
randybennett@barbadostoday.bb