Gail Alexan­der

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day ex­plored the pos­si­bil­i­ty of hold­ing a Cari­com-US sum­mit in T&T, ac­cord­ing to a state­ment from the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter.Per­sad-Bisses­sar did so in Wash­ing­ton yes­ter­day when she met with US Deputy Sec­re­tary of State William Burns to dis­cuss on­go­ing bi­lat­er­al is­sues.She is in the US at­tend­ing an OAS Amer­i­c­as-Africa busi­ness fo­rum which she will ad­dress this morn­ing.

Dur­ing yes­ter­day's meet­ing with Burns, the Prime Min­is­ter, who is the in­com­ing Cari­com chair­man, dis­cussed the progress to­wards de­ter­min­ing the pref­er­ence of mem­ber states in re­spect of an ap­pro­pri­ate in­ter-gov­ern­men­tal agree­ment with the US.She al­so ex­pressed her vi­sion to ex­pand the re­gion­al ar­chi­tec­ture to the ben­e­fit of all Cari­com-mem­ber coun­tries.

The PM al­so re­ferred to the need for the US Gov­ern­ment to do more to as­sist Caribbean coun­tries, in­clud­ing T&T, in the fight against the il­le­gal drug trade.Both she and Burns agreed on the need to im­prove in­for­ma­tion-shar­ing be­tween gov­ern­ment agen­cies and to do more to in­form re­gion­al au­thor­i­ties of the crim­i­nal back­ground of de­por­tees from Caribbean coun­tries.

The Prime Min­is­ter and Burns ad­dressed mat­ters af­fect­ing T&T and the re­gion, in­clud­ing the US For­eign Ac­count Tax Com­pli­ance Act (FAT­CA) which is part of the US ef­fort to com­bat tax eva­sion by US cit­i­zens hold­ing over­seas in­vest­ments.The Prime Min­is­ter, who al­so met with pres­i­dent of the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank, Luis Al­ber­to Moreno, said the "cur­rent port­fo­lio for T&T is the largest ever with 30 op­er­a­tions, val­ued US$460.1 mil­lion."

Per­sad-Bisses­sar raised con­cerns about the de­cline in the num­ber of Caribbean na­tion­als serv­ing in se­nior man­age­ment po­si­tions of the IDB and T&T's con­tin­ued con­cern for the re­gion's eco­nom­ic well-be­ing.