REGIONAL CAPITAL MARKET DEVELOPMENT FORGES AHEAD

Member States of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) are to benefit from a programme aimed at imparting new financial skills which will, among other things, expand investment options for everyone across the Region.

Representatives from a cross-section of financial institutions including stock exchanges, central banks, securities commissions, Ministries of Finance, and the Brokers' Community will attend a Financial Engineering Workshop, 15-25 November 1999 in Barbados. Participants will be able to develop skills needed to create and introduce new financial instruments to be traded across the Region utilising the existing infrastructure. According to an officer of the Economic Intelligence and Policy Unit of the CARICOM Secretariat, which is playing a major role in the programme, participants, on completion of the workshop, will be able to advise clients on suitable investment instruments which can be traded on the regional capital market system.

The workshop will be hosted by the CARICOM Secretariat utilising funds provided by the Inter American development Bank (IDB), and it will be conducted by Crown Agents Financial Services Limited, a fully authorised UK Bank, wholly owned by Crown Agents for Over-seas Governments and Administration Limited. Crown Agents representatives in the Region, based in Guyana and Barbados have been instrumental in working with the CARICOM Secretariat to develop and implement the workshop.

The organisers are positive that the development of skills which the workshop will facilitate, will further promote the wider objectives of increased movement of capital across the Region, improved investment opportunities, and the enhancement of the Region as an area for investment for both regional and international investors.

The workshop is also seen as one of the vital steps in the development of a regional capital market, an essential part of CARICOM's progress towards a Single Market and Economy.

So far, there has been the creation of a Regional Stock Exchange with cross listing and cross trading on the stock exchanges among three states, namely, Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago.