Briefing the media on Tuesday (10 Jan 2006) at the Caricom Secretariat, Turkeyen, Georgetown, he said he had discussed with Caricom Secretary-General Edwin Carrington and his staff some of the arrangements for the Caricom Heads of Governments Inter-Sessional Meeting to be held in Port of Spain (Trinidad) next month as well as other issues that were relevant to the successful conduct of operations in the region.
The region, he said, recognises fully the challenge in implementing the Caricom Single Market that has just come into being and which would be marked by a ceremony in Jamaica on January 30 (2006).
Security, he said, was a matter of very high priority because the Caribbean was situated between the narcotics-producing countries of the south, essentially Colombia - and the consuming countries of the north - USA, Canada and western Europe.
He said not all the drugs and guns to protect the drug traffickers that enter the region leave and this poses a security problem for Caricom. The drug trade is a worldwide phenomenon and the Caribbean is not immune to it. "How we protect ourselves from the drug trade is a high priority [on the] agenda of Caricom," he said.
Streamlining of the single market and institutional arrangements to ensure that the single economy comes on stream by 2008 is an issue to be given priority under Manning's chairmanship.
Disaster preparedness, too, he said, cannot be ignored. And he noted that Grenada was hit twice by hurricanes recently and other Caricom countries such as the Bahamas, Jamaica, Belize and Haiti were adversely affected by natural disasters. With regard to what was taking place in the world, he said, it could not be predicted when the next natural disaster would hit the region.
Calling the Grenada experience especially instructive, he said that as disasters took place in other parts of the world, priority tended to be given to them rather than what some people see as an insignificant Caribbean. And because of this, Caricom countries need to look much closer at their own arrangements to protect themselves first then take appropriate action to attract the international community. "More and more we have to rely on our own methods," he said.
The next issue, he said was the need to deepen the integration process, which arises out of a number of considerations including the loss of markets and cuts in prices of banana and sugar exports from the region. A number of economies in the region depend very heavily on banana and sugar.
Manning said what would be the economic drivers in each territory which could guarantee that the single market is sustainable is the question that arises. "That is the issue and a time is going to come when we have to sit around the table and decide who does what in the region to ensure that when we sit at the table everybody has something to eat," he said. Such integration of the regional economy has been conceptualised and spoken about for several decades.
He said he expected no earth shattering improvement during his tenure as chair. The objective was to improve the work of the movement incrementally to ensure that as the chairmanship moved on, they could build on what has been put in place. (Miranda La Rose)
