(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana)     The series of meetings between the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and Mexico including the Third Summit must be viewed as creating “a new platform” for the relationship in the years ahead.
This view was expressed by the Chairman of CARICOM’s Council for Foreign and Community and Relations (COFCOR) the Honourable Winston Dookeran, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Trinidad and Tobago as he spoke at the opening of a meeting of Foreign Ministers of CARICOM and Mexico in Merida, Mexico on Tuesday morning. Mr Dookeran said the 40- year relationship had evolved into a more mature one that took into account both global and developmental issues.
CARICOM Foreign Ministers and Heads of Government are in Merida for the Third Summit with Mexico which takes place later on Tuesday. All the speakers at the opening session of the Foreign Ministers meeting expressed their pleasure at the Mexico-Caribbean Business Forum which took place on Monday. Mexican Foreign Minister His Excellency Jose Antonio Meade stressed the importance of Small and Medium Enterprises to the economy which was the focus of one of the workshops at the Forum. Minister Dookeran referred to SMEs as a major instrument for economic change while CARICOM Secretary-General Ambassador Irwin LaRocque said an initiative like the Forum “opens new vistas in our relationship and potentially creates opportunity for our entrepreneurs in tourism, infrastructure, agriculture, renewable energy and Small and Medium Enterprises.”
Minister Meade took the opportunity to announce that Mexico would be making a US$14 million contribution to the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF) as the country sought to strengthen its partnership with the Community on disaster management issues.
Ambassador LaRocque noted that the projects identified at the last Summit held in Barbados in 2012 had almost all been completed and that the feed-back from Member States had been most positive.