Economic survival of the region depends on the Caricom Single Market and Economy (CSME), Prime Minister Patrick Manning said at the official inauguration of the Caricom Single Market (CSM) at the University of West Indies, Mona Campus, Jamaica yesterday.
Manning delivered the feature address at the ceremony as the new Caricom Chairman.
Decades in the making, the CSM is the first installment of the CSME, an economic arrangement that will allow Caricom goods, services, people and capital to move throughout Caricom without tariffs and restrictions to achieve a single economic space. The economy aspect is due to come on board in 2008.
Manning said, “On January 1 this year, our nations undoubtedly reached an important milestone in the integration movement with the establishment of the Caricom Single Market. It has been a tough time consuming work.”
“As we inaugurate the CSM today, we should not fail to recognise that we are both participants and witnesses of history in motion.
We should be pleased that we are shaping the history ourselves as too often are the smaller developing nations of the world described as hapless victims of larger global development,” Manning added.
Source: The Nassau Guardian
