Re­gion­al lead­ers will meet to­day at the Hilton Trinidad for the first of a two-day Spe­cial Meet­ing of the Heads of Gov­ern­ment of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) on the Cari­com Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my (CSME).

This 18th Spe­cial Meet­ing was agreed to at their Ju­ly meet­ing at Mon­tego Bay, Ja­maica, last Ju­ly, when the Cari­com heads recog­nised the need to keep the fo­cus on the CSME.

At that time, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley urged that this to­day’s meet­ing should be held here.

Prime Min­is­ter of Bar­ba­dos, Mia Mot­t­ley, who is Lead Head of Gov­ern­ment with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the CSME in the CARI­COM Qua­si-Cab­i­net will make a spe­cial pre­sen­ta­tion at the meet­ing urg­ing her col­league lead­ers to step up ef­forts to re­turn the CSME to CARI­COM’s “ac­tive agen­da”.

The lead­ers who are sched­uled to at­tend in­clude the cur­rent Cari­com chair­man, Ja­maican Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness, Haiti Pres­i­dent Jovenel Molse and Do­mini­ca’s Prime Min­is­ter Roosvelt Sker­rit.

Guyana Pres­i­dent David Granger, who re­cent­ly re­turned from Cu­ba fol­low­ing med­ical treat­ment, will be rep­re­sent­ed by For­eign Min­is­ter Carl Greenidge, the St Vin­cent and the Grenadines del­e­ga­tion will be head­ed by Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Camil­lo Gon­salves, while Be­lize will be rep­re­sent­ed by For­eign Min­is­ter Wil­fred Er­ling­ton.

Overnight, Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley met with busi­ness lead­ers to re­view the chal­lenges of mak­ing the CSME work for busi­ness es­tab­lish­ment and move­ment of skilled na­tion­als.

At a lead-up meet­ing last Ju­ly in Bar­ba­dos, Mot­t­ley chaired a prepara­to­ry meet­ing where of­fi­cials re­viewed the sta­tus of im­ple­men­ta­tion of the pro­vi­sions of the CSME. These in­clud­ed the pro­to­col on con­tin­gent rights, sim­pli­fied ad­min­is­tra­tive pro­ce­dures for move­ment of per­sons un­der the CSME, the po­lice cer­tifi­cate of char­ac­ter, pro­ce­dures on the re­fusal of en­try of Cari­com na­tion­als, se­cu­ri­ty, gov­ern­ment pro­cure­ment and the en­ti­tle­ment of Hait­ian na­tion­als to an au­to­mat­ic stay of six months up­on ar­rival in the Cari­com Mem­ber States.