The Acting Prime Minister of Barbados, the Honourable Richard Sealy is scheduled to engage nineteen students from tertiary institutions in Antigua and Barbuda at a welcome ceremony on Monday 28 September 2015. The students are participating in a CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME) mission to Barbados next week – 28 September - 3 October 2015.

Secretary-General, Ambassador Irwin LaRoque, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on behalf of the CARICOM Secretariat with the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in June. The MOU allows CARICOM Member States to utilise ‘.Stat’, a software tool, for the facilitation of labour market analysis and other related functions. The MOU was signed at the CARICOM Secretariat’s headquarters in Georgetown, Guyana.

The CARICOM Secretariat is pressing ahead with its public education programme regarding the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME). It will be hosting a series of three (3) public sensitisation sessions on the facilitation of travel within the CSME. The first of these will be held in Dominica on Friday, September 9 and a wide cross-section of the public is expected to attend. These sessions are being facilitated by resource persons from the Secretariat and implemented with assistance provided under the 10th European Development Fund (EDF). The other two (2) sessions will be held later in Guyana and Jamaica.

The CARICOM Secretariat winds up its sensitization sessions for judges in competition law and policy this Friday, June 17 in Belize at the Radisson Fort George Hotel. Fourteen members of the judiciary will be participating in the activity which is funded under the 10^th European Development Fund (EDF).These include judges from Belize’s Supreme Court, The Court of Appeal as well as registrars.

One of the major aims of the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME) is to stimulate economic growth and competitiveness by facilitating intra-regional commercial activity. An important project being executed by the CSME Unit of the CARICOM Secretariat will make this increasingly possible. On Monday, the Secretariat hosts a 2-day regional consultation in Trinidad and Tobago on the development of a framework policy on establishing a single jurisdiction within the CSME. Having a single jurisdiction means that once a company is registered in one Member State, it is deemed to be registered in all participating Member States in the CSME. This would save the company time and financial costs associated with the registration process.

Nineteen students from tertiary institutions in Grenada are participating in a CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME) mission to Belize next week – 30 August – 4 September 2015.

CARICOM nationals will now have more efficient access to the provisions of the CARICOM Single Market due to a recently concluded training exercise. Close to 300 public administrators and officials across the region have been trained in a new data management and work flow system that will make application processes under the CSME much smoother.

The final mission under the CARICOM Secretariat’s ‘Students Engaging the CSME through Field Promotion’ project kicks off Monday, May 23 in Dominica. 

The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) is closer to setting up a labour market information system for the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME). On Thursday, June 16, CARICOM Secretary-General, Ambassador Irwin LaRoque, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

The agreement was signed in 2012 and ends in March 2017. Permanent Secretaries, National Authorising Officers and National CSME Focal Points were today meeting in Barbados seeking ways to overcome project delivery hurdles. 

(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana)     CARICOM Deputy Secretary General Dr. Manorma Soeknandan says that CARICOM should not go through the recent EU experience whereby the United Kingdom decided to leave that grouping. She was speaking at the opening ceremony of a Regional Technical Meeting on the implementation of 10th European Development Fund (EDF) CSME and Economic Integration Programme on Friday 24 June.

The Ambassador says the EU is better off together than standing alone and is counted in the global arena because of this cooperation. Through the EU many small countries can make their voices heard, he added. This is why there is support from the EU for the CARICOM Single Market and Economy.

According to Minister Boyce what is necessary is to make sure that the Community pillars are so structured that Member States are able to benefit from those pillars. He is of the view that a great deal of the economic resilience mentioned in the Community Strategic plan will happen through the implementation of the CSME, but that it is built out in a way that would make each country stronger.