President David Granger is currently leading a delegation, including Vice-President and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Carl Greenidge, to the Ninth Meeting of the Prime Ministerial Sub-Committee on the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME) in St. Michael Barbados on Wednesday, September 5.
Matters to be discussed include a stakeholder’s perspective and recommendations for an effective CSME as well as macroeconomic support measures and specific key considerations for CSME effectiveness.
Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley on Wednesday, according to the CMC, urged greater cooperation among CARICOM countries in ensuring the success of the CSME that allows for the free movement of goods, skills, labour and services across the 15-member regional integration grouping.
“We have since Montego Bay been able to reignite in our people a confidence that can make this Caribbean project worth our while and that we can allow it to make a definable difference in their lives,” Mottley said as she addressed the Prime Ministerial Sub-Committee on the CSME.
Mottley said the signing of the protocol on Contingent Rights was the first initiative in that regard, saying “no one in the Caribbean will move easily without understanding what will be the implications for their spouses, their dependent parents or their children”.
She said that it is in this “real way we have made a definable difference to our people. Similarly those amongst us in our region who are committed towards expanding their enterprises now have the opportunity to see that they can bid for government contracts over a certain threshold with respect to the protocol on Government procurement that we are hoping to put in place by the next heads of government meeting for signature”.
