Ministers of Trade of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) have been encouraged to provide their perspectives on how they see the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME) working and how it could be improved to make a greater impact on the people of the Region.

he Ministers are in Georgetown, Guyana for the Forty-Second Meeting of the Council for Trade and Economic Development (COTED). The CSME is on the agenda of the two-day Meeting underway at the Marriott Hotel. The CSME and its implementation are key agenda items of the COTED Meeting.

At the Opening Ceremony of the Meeting on Thursday morning, CARICOM Deputy Secretary-General, Ambassador Manorma Soeknandan PhD., reminded delegates that the CSME was a key element of integration and was the bedrock of the Community’s economic resilience.

The acceleration of implementation and use of the CSME, she pointed out, was one of the high-priority areas which CARICOM Heads of Government had singled out for focused implementation during the period of the CARICOM Five-Year Strategic Plan.

This meeting will have the opportunity to assess how we are positioning ourselves to derive the optimum benefit from the implementation of the CSME to drive growth and development within our Member States. It is important that, as Ministers, you give your perspectives both on the extent to which the current CSME framework has been fulfilling the objective and how it can be enhanced to have a greater impact on the lives of the population at large,” the Deputy Secretary-General said.

In other words, how do we achieve a more effective and efficient operation of the CSME remembering that it is a tool to be fashioned and used to benefit the people of our Community. Our people want to see results. The consolidation and enhancement of the operations of the Single Market will also allow for a more coherent approach in our External Trade Negotiations,” she added.