The Cari­com Pri­vate Sec­tor Or­ga­ni­za­tion (CP­SO), and sev­en oth­er pri­vate sec­tor or­gan­i­sa­tions through­out the re­gion, has is­sued a re­minder about the ben­e­fits of the Cari­com Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my (CSME).

In a news re­lease is­sued late Wednes­day, the CP­SO said that since it be­came an ‘as­so­ciate’ in­sti­tu­tion of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) in 2000, it has worked with fel­low pri­vate sec­tor com­pa­nies and busi­ness or­gan­i­sa­tions to ad­vance projects and rep­re­sen­ta­tions to pur­sue the no­ble ob­jec­tives of the CARI­COM Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my (CSME).

The re­lease came days af­ter T&T Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ques­tioned the ef­fec­tive­ness of Cari­com while al­so crit­i­cis­ing stances tak­en by mem­ber states of the Com­mu­ni­ty with re­gard to the on­go­ing Unit­ed States-Venezuela ten­sions.

The CP­SO said it sought to “reaf­firm that the CSME has de­liv­ered tan­gi­ble ben­e­fits to firms and work­ers through­out the Re­gion, sup­port­ing sig­nif­i­cant in­tra-re­gion­al trade, strength­en­ing re­gion­al sup­ply chains, and con­tribut­ing mean­ing­ful­ly to for­eign-ex­change earn­ings and eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty in Mem­ber States, in­clud­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

The CP­SO urged for “con­stuc­tive en­gage­ment” be­tween the Cari­com mem­bers at this time.

The re­lease said, “At a time of glob­al eco­nom­ic un­cer­tain­ty, the pri­vate sec­tor de­pends on con­fi­dence, sta­bil­i­ty, and con­struc­tive en­gage­ment among Mem­ber States. In these times, the phrase “stronger to­geth­er” is par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant. Cari­com con­tin­ues to serve as the fo­rum for lead­ers, gov­ern­ments, in­sti­tu­tions and the peo­ple of our Com­mu­ni­ty to join hands and stand shoul­der to shoul­der in sol­i­dar­i­ty to trans­form vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties in­to as­sets by build­ing re­silience and strate­gi­cal­ly in­te­grat­ing in­to the glob­al econ­o­my.”

The CP­SO re­lease—which was al­so signed by the re­cent­ly formed Pri­vate Sec­tor Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Trinidad & To­ba­go, Pri­vate Sec­tor Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Ja­maica, Bar­ba­dos Pri­vate Sec­tor As­so­ci­a­tion, Pri­vate Sec­tor Com­mis­sion of Guyana OECS Busi­ness Coun­cil, Suri­name Cham­ber of Com­merce and In­dus­try (Kamer van Koo­phan­del en Fab­rieken) and the Be­lize Cham­ber of Com­merce and In­dus­try—re­ferred to the CSME’s con­tri­bu­tions over time.

“We are joined by pri­vate sec­tor or­gan­i­sa­tions from across the re­gion in rec­og­niz­ing that we all have a role to play in im­prov­ing the CSME such that it may work bet­ter for the ben­e­fits of all mem­ber states and their cit­i­zens. In a world of in­creas­ing iso­la­tion, we recog­nise that Cari­com and the CSME vi­sion are crit­i­cal for our joint sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

“We ac­knowl­edge the col­lab­o­ra­tive and in­clu­sive frame­work af­ford­ed to the re­gion­al pri­vate sec­tor by the Cari­com heads in pur­suit of the full im­ple­men­ta­tion of the CSME. We in the pri­vate sec­tor across the re­gion are com­mit­ted to work­ing to­geth­er with our gov­ern­ments and oth­er stake­hold­ers in Cari­com to achieve this vi­sion, “the re­lease said, adding fur­ther, “From the 1989 De­c­la­ra­tion of Grand Anse which ini­ti­at­ed the process to­wards the CSME, to the sign­ing of the Re­vised Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas in 2001, which es­tab­lished the CSME and the launch of the CSME in 2006, the vi­sion of Cari­com lead­ers to cre­ate a com­mon mar­ket which would pro­vide greater economies of scale to re­gion­al busi­ness and more op­por­tu­ni­ties for Cari­com cit­i­zens to thrive re­mains a rel­e­vant as­pi­ra­tion for our Coun­tries.”