CARICOM, Mexico seek to cement ties - against common challenges
Georgetown, GINA, May 21, 2012
The second CARICOM/Mexico Summit opened today in Bridgetown, Barbados with acknowledgement of the need for a strengthened alliance against the common challenges of citizen security, transnational crime and sustainable human development.
Trade, investment, tourism and cooperation are expected to feature prominently over the two-day event but, CARICOM leaders are also looking forward to a meaningful outcome on natural disaster risk reduction and the environment.
Under two existing programmes; the Meso-American Territorial Information System and the Meso-American Environmental Sustainability Strategy; experiences are to be shared on regional co-ordination system for natural disaster risk reduction and projects in the areas of bio-diversity and forestry, climate change, green growth and sustainable competitiveness.
Guyana’s President Donald Ramotar joined his other colleague Heads of State in CARICOM at the summit, looking forward most of all to an engagement with Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon on strengthening responses to challenges in the social, economic and political realm.
While accrediting the New Mexican Ambassador to Guyana Francisco Olguin on May 10, President Ramotar conveyed the high value which the Guyana Government believes the forum can engender with the challenges facing today’s world.
He said that in the current global environment, all countries have become forcibly aware of the need to work together for a common good and hailed the bilateral relations between the Governments of Guyana and Mexico especially as it relates to advancing the political economic and social objective on regional and international issues.
CARICOM Secretary-General, Ambassador Irwin LaRocque in his remarks at the opening of the summit today, made reference to the support which Mexico rendered to Haiti including the recent visit by President Calderon as a symbol of the Latin American country’s deep commitment to the revival and reconstruction of the country.
Given that the CARICOM/Mexico summit took place days after the devastating earthquake in 2010, Ambassador LaRocque said both sides assumed the commitment of creating new measures to alleviate, in the medium and long-term, the challenges that Haiti is facing.
The inaugural summit was held during “testing times” according to Chairman of CARICOM and President of Suriname Desi Bouterse who made reference to the recovery efforts by several member states from the global financial and economic crisis and the fact that discussions then were anchored around the need for a strategic partnership common to all states to address those challenges.
He noted regrettably however, that the “stranglehold” of the crisis remains somewhat unabated and, as small vulnerable economies, countries are still seeking strategies to counteract the debilitating effects of the crisis.
“It is also fitting that our agenda will focus on some areas of mutual concern, including citizen security and transnational organized crime, issues which have had a harmful effect on our countries, destabilizing our societies, and hampering economic development,” President Bouterse said.
Barbados’ Prime Minister Freundel Stuart in his address said that at this unsure point in time of world affairs, the most significant input that Mexico can make to the cause of Caribbean development is that of advocacy because of its role as current chair of the G20. Next month the G20 Summit will be held.
“ I must articulate here some of CARICOM’s critical concerns, which include: the slow process of reform of the multilateral institutions and the uneven results to date; the continued lack of representativeness and transparency of the G20 which, as the Commonwealth Secretary General has recently said, may represent 90% of global GDP but certainly not 90% of the world’s countries; the worrying signs that we have moved from the rich man’s club of the G7 to the big man’s club of the G20, whose members are more united in telling non-G20 countries what they should do than in prescribing for those within their own fold,” Stuart said.
He also spoke of ‘constant tilting of playing fields and moving of goal-posts in the G20’s response towards Caribbean-based international financial centres, notwithstanding the fact that the bulk of proven money-laundering, inadequate regulation and tax avoidance has occurred in the financial centres of Europe and the United States of America’.
The Barbadian Prime Minister highlighted the need to promote the supportive policies of the Small Vulnerable Economies in the areas of financing for development, aid for trade, and addressing the issue of indebtedness; the need to reassert the grave threat posed by Climate Change.
Mexico holds the reputation as the first country to form a Joint Commission with CARICOM, to identify and promote economic, political and cultural co-operation initiatives.
The signing of a technical co-operation agreement in 1990 to promote transportation, language training, agriculture and agro-industrial development, maritime education, disaster preparedness and management, and climatology further cemented relations between the two.
As a result, partnerships were forged between the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) and CENAPRED the Mexican disaster preparedness and management agency, and between the Caribbean Meteorological Institute (CMI) and, the Mexican Institute for Water Technology.
Financial services, security, health, energy and climate change were incorporated as the cooperation evolved.
Mexico is chair to the upcoming G-20 summit and the government has identified green growth, food security and infrastructure as the priorities.