Richard Lord

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day ap­pealed to del­e­gates at an Eco­nom­ic Com­mis­sion for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (ECLAC) meet­ing in Port-of-Spain to for­mu­late mea­sures to help T&T and oth­er small is­land na­tions to cush­ion the ef­fects of ex­ter­nal shocks like the glob­al fi­nan­cial cri­sis.Per­sad-Bisses­sar made the ap­peal at the First Meet­ing of the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Round Ta­ble at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel in Port-of-Spain.She told the del­e­gates: "I chal­lenge you to de­lib­er­ate, de­bate and de­vel­op work­able so­lu­tions and con­crete di­rec­tives to these bar­ri­ers."She al­so ob­served that in the UN sys­tem the Caribbean is an ap­pendage with­in the re­gion of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.Per­sad-Bisses­sar ap­pealed for more em­pha­sis to be placed on the de­vel­op­ment of the Caribbean as part of the en­tire re­gion.

Among the is­sues dis­cussed at the meet­ing were so­cial jus­tice, pover­ty erad­i­ca­tion and good gov­er­nance.Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the meet­ing pro­vid­ed a unique op­por­tu­ni­ty for Cari­com "to rewrite our de­vel­op­ment des­tiny and to in­tro­duce a new path to­wards the long-term goals of our re­gion." She said those goals in­clud­ed pover­ty al­le­vi­a­tion, eco­nom­ic growth and so­cial de­vel­op­ment, so­cial eq­ui­ty, es­tab­lish­ment of a more eq­ui­table fi­nan­cial struc­ture, trade deficit re­duc­tion and the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of trade and in­dus­try."She said the meet­ing could be crit­i­cal to­ward de­vel­op­ment of a new re­gion­al agen­da for mem­ber states in the run-up to the Unit­ed Na­tions Con­fer­ence on sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment in Brazil next year.ECLAC ex­ec­u­tive sec­re­tary, Ali­cia Barce­na, was high in praise for this coun­try's Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund, which is based on a per­cent­age of oil and gas ex­ports from T&T.Barce­na said ECLAC ac­cept­ed the PM's chal­lenge to de­vise mech­a­nisms to as­sist in the de­vel­op­ment of the Caribbean re­gion.­­