(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) Secretary-General of the Caribbean Community, H.E. Edwin Carrington has called on the Region to increase productivity and enhance its competitiveness to adequately confront the effects of more open markets.

The Secretary-General gave the charge at his end-of-year press conference via videoconferencing anchored at the CARICOM Secretariat Headquarters in Georgetown, Guyana on 18 December 2007. With him in Georgetown were members of Executive Management of the Secretariat and other senior staff members.

"With the Region’s signing on 16 December 2008 of an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the European Union (EU), there was need for a 'massive increase' in productivity and competitiveness in our own markets.”

“We need to start now,” he told journalists from across the Region during the two-hour encounter.

At the end of four years of negotiations, the EU and the ACP Caribbean Forum group of countries that comprises the 15 CARICOM Member States and the Dominican Republic signed the EPA which replaces the Cotonou Agreement, and which comes into effect on 1 January 2008.

The Agreement covers trade in goods and services and contains a development component. Mr. David Hales, Programme Manager, External Economic and Trade Negotiations said that trade in services was the most significant aspect of the Agreement. The accord, he said, covers a comprehensive range and included traditional and emerging services.

In addition to the EPA and other developments during 2007, members of the media were also apprised of the continued implementation of the CARICOM Single Market and Economy including the inauguration of the Suriname-headquartered Competition Commission in January 2008; the operationalisation of the Regional Development Fund and the Secretariat’s thrust towards institutional strengthening.

The reopening of the CARICOM Representational Office in Haiti, the effects of climate change on the Region, disaster management and the steps the Region was taking to mitigate and deal with disaster, were among the other issues raised at the press conference.

Contact: piu@caricom.org