"There is no ques­tion that the Caribbean is shoul­der­ing an un­sus­tain­able debt bur­den which com­pro­mis­es the ca­pac­i­ty of the economies for sus­tained growth and re­stricts the op­tions avail­able to gov­ern­ments to in­tro­duce im­por­tant so­cial and wel­fare pro­grammes," the ex­ec­u­tive sec­re­tary of the Eco­nom­ic Com­mis­sion for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (Eclac) Ali­cia B�rce­na said yes­ter­day.

She was speak­ing via video con­fer­ence at the open­ing the 17th meet­ing of the Mon­i­tor­ing Com­mit­tee of the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment and Co­op­er­a­tion Com­mit­tee (CD­CC) in Port-of-Spain. Min­is­ters and high-lev­el gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Caribbean gath­ered in T&T to con­sid­er progress made in im­ple­men­ta­tion of de­vel­op­ment strate­gies for the re­gion.

Al­so par­tic­i­pat­ing in the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the mon­i­tor­ing com­mit­tee on the 40th year of the CD­CC was the cur­rent chai, Min­is­ter of State for For­eign Af­fairs and For­eign Trade of Ja­maica, Ar­nal­do Brown; For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter, Win­ston Dook­er­an; and Grena­da Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs and In­ter­na­tion­al Busi­ness, Clarice Mod­este-Cur­wen.

The mon­i­tor­ing com­mit­tee en­dorsed the key out­comes of the pre­ced­ing two-day sym­po­sium that of­fered Caribbean pol­i­cy mak­ers and ex­perts a fo­rum to de­lib­er­ate the re­gion's de­vel­op­ment pri­or­i­ties as the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty pre­pares to adopt a new set of glob­al sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment goals (SDGs).

Re­fer­ring to the dis­cus­sions of the sym­po­sium, B�rce­na un­der­scored that these rep­re­sent "an im­por­tant first step to­wards en­sur­ing that the Post 2015 de­vel­op­ment agen­da will work for the Caribbean; by iden­ti­fy­ing from among the 17 goals the ones that will best ad­dress the pri­or­i­ty de­vel­op­ment needs of the re­gion."

The mon­i­tor­ing com­mit­tee al­so fo­cused on strate­gies for debt re­lief and to pro­mote in­no­v­a­tive fi­nanc­ing.

Eclac deputy ex­ec­u­tive sec­re­tary An­to­nio Pra­do pre­sent­ed a pro­pos­al on a co-or­di­nat­ed strat­e­gy to ad­dress debt re­duc­tion for sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment in the Caribbean.

The time­li­ness of tack­ling this is­sue was un­der­scored by Min­is­ter of State for For­eign Af­fairs and For­eign Trade of Ja­maica, Ar­nal­do Brown, who stressed that "the re­gion needs a growth strat­e­gy to build pro­duc­tiv­i­ty" and fur­ther un­der­scored that "a ma­jor pro­duc­tiv­i­ty dri­ve is es­sen­tial."

The meet­ing fur­ther re­viewed progress in im­ple­men­ta­tion of the on­go­ing work pro­gramme of Eclac in the Caribbean.

Over the past 18 months, wide-rang­ing ac­tiv­i­ties have been un­der­tak­en, in­clud­ing ex­ten­sive re­search on the state of so­cioe­co­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment in the sub­re­gion; strength­en­ing the ca­pac­i­ty of gov­ern­ments to as­sess and re­spond to dis­as­ters through the use of the Dam­age and Loss As­sess­ment (DaLA) method­ol­o­gy; as­sist­ing gov­ern­ments with the de­vel­op­ment of na­tion­al trade poli­cies; en­hanc­ing the abil­i­ty of na­tion­al sta­tis­ti­cal of­fices to make most ef­fec­tive use of cen­sus da­ta through train­ing in the use of spe­cialised (RE­DATAM) soft­ware; and in­tro­duc­ing strate­gies to im­prove gov­ern­ment ef­fi­cien­cy by im­ple­ment­ing e-gov­ern­ment sys­tems.

For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an praised these ef­forts and thanked Eclac for its con­tri­bu­tion to­wards build­ing mod­els of Caribbean con­ver­gence.