(Caribbean Community Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) was assured of the support of Mexico with respect to advocating for small vulnerable economies in the upcoming meeting of the G20 which is being hosted by Mexico in June.

The assurance came at a meeting between CARICOM Heads of Government and the President of Mexico His Excellency Felipe Calderon in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, held on Friday prior to the Sixth Summit of the Americas being held in that city.

The CARICOM leaders used the opportunity to impress on their Mexican counterpart the importance of the G20 revisiting the basic premise upon which countries are classified in the International Financial Institution framework. Such classification affects the type and level of assistance which a country can receive from the IFIs. A number of CARICOM countries have been graduated out of the concessional financing arrangements because they have been classified as middle income countries.

The Heads of Government made the point at the meeting that consideration must be given to special arrangements for the vulnerability of Small Highly Indebted Middle Income Countries (SHIMICS), a category into which many of the countries reside.

Friday’s meeting, both sides agreed, was a prelude to the scheduled CARICOM-Mexico Summit which will be held in Barbados in May. President Calderon signalled that the issue of the reform of the IFIs and the concerns of the CARICOM countries would be placed on the G20 Agenda and further discussions on the issue would take place at the Barbados Summit.

Both sides also placed great importance on stabilising global food and commodity prices. The instability of those prices, they agreed, increased the level of poverty and could become a major source of social unrest.

The Leaders indicated their disappointment in the failure of the international community to honour pledges made to rebuild and reconstruct Haiti following the 2010 earthquake. They agreed that the issue would be raised during the Sixth Summit of the Americas to remind those countries which had made pledges to act on delivering them.

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