Your Excellencies the Presidents of Haiti, Guyana, and Suriname;
Colleague Heads of Government;
Honourable Cabinet Ministers;
Hon. Chief Justice;
Hon. President and Justices of the Court of Appeal;
Hon. Leader of the Opposition;
Mr.Secretary-General;
Senators and Members of Parliament;

His Excellency Mr. Don McKinnon, Secretary General of the Commonwealth;
His Excellency, Dr. Jacques Diouf, the Director General of the Food and Agricultural Organization;
Your Excellencies, Members of the Diplomatic Corps;
Heads of Regional Organizations;
Reverend Clergy;
Mr. Secretary to the Cabinet and
Senior Government Officials;
Delegates,
Ladies and Gentlemen:

Good Morning and Welcome.

It is a pleasure for The Bahamas to welcome Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community and delegates attending the 19th Inter-Sessional Meeting of Conference of Heads of Government to Nassau. It is my special pleasure to greet you as Chairman of Conference for the third time since 1992.

I should like especially to welcome new Heads of Government including Prime Minister Bruce Golding of Jamaica, Prime Minister David Thompson of Barbados and Prime Minister Dean Barrow of Belize. And, we also welcome the Hon. Stevenson King of St. Lucia who assumed the position of Head of Government following the passing of our former colleague, the Rt. Hon. John Compton. Please join me in observing a moment of silence in memory of Sir John.

Thank you.

I also wish to acknowledge and thank Barbados for the excellent leadership lent to the Conference over the years and fondly recall the insightful and beneficial contribution of former Prime Minister Owen Arthur. I have no doubt that Prime Minister David Thompson will continue that Barbadian tradition; a tradition to which I was first exposed in 1992 in the person of former Prime Minister Erskine Sandiford.

We have a busy two days ahead of us and apart from an invitation by our lead Head on Health, Dr. Denzil Douglas, to join him on a health walk tomorrow morning, I am not certain that you will have much opportunity to enjoy some of what we typically offer guests to our country – that is rest and relaxation.

The Conference of Heads of Government last met in Nassau in July, 2001, only months before a seminal shift in world relations following upon the events of 9/11 in the United States of America. Subsequent to those events, Heads of Government gathered here in Emergency Session and then in the rescheduled Heads of Government Summit on Tourism in October, 2001.

I daresay events are not so dramatic now as they were seven years ago but certainly many of the issues confronting our people today are just as serious.

The economic down-turn in the US, the result of any number of issues including the high and increasing cost of fuel (trading at $105 per barrel yesterday) is negatively impacting all of our tourism economies and increasing the cost of living for our people. And the sub-prime meltdown and the related collapse of the US housing market will further impact travel to our region.

Hence, our tourism sector is stalling. While world travel and tourism continued to grow by as much as 7% last year, we in the Caribbean have enjoyed a far smaller rate of growth - hovering at as little as 2½%. Even more chilling, more than 1% of that growth in tourism is reportedly accounted for by expansion in regional, but not CARICOM, tourism destinations.

Yet all of us are aware that creating a viable and sustainable tourist industry is critical to the economic well being of most of the member states of the Caribbean Community.

While this has been recognized and there exists Caribbean cooperation in tourism at some levels, I believe that our efforts could be more focussed and intensified. We might improve collaboration and cooperation in areas such as product development, service standards, marketing, eco-tourism and sustainable tourism promotion and development.

And so it is my hope that during our deliberations over the next two days we might agree to convene a special session on Tourism, hopefully in conjunction with our Annual Meeting in July.

Ladies and Gentlemen:

While some of us have better integrated some productive segments of our economies than others, none of us has achieved the all-important goal of linking our agricultural and marine resources sectors to the consumer sectors of our economies so as to reduce, measurably and positively, either our food import bills or the price of food.

This impacts the cost of our tourism product.

And, this makes the threat of the loss of preferential access to developed world markets for our exports even more serious.

It is critical, therefore, that we take lessons from the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) recently concluded with the European Community so as to inform our economic and commercial relations with our other trading partners, near and far.

Ladies and Gentlemen:

Rising crime levels in our communities are threatening even our traditional view of ourselves as warm and friendly people. Notwithstanding tremendous efforts on the part of national, regional and international law enforcement agencies, the illicit drug trade has not abated and contributes to the expansion of a gun culture in our region with awful social and economic consequences.

Even as we began to make respectable headway against the HIV/AIDS pandemic we have been confronted by the reality that the unchecked proliferation of non-communicable diseases in our region threatens to rob us of too many of our people - many young, well-educated and skilled, during what ought to be their most productive period of life.

We can, however, be rightly proud of the leadership that we are providing as a region as demonstrated by the Regional Summit on Chronic Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) held in Trinidad and Tobago in September last year. That Summit served to highlight the critical importance of the promotion of wellness as a national policy. And, further, it highlighted the urgency for adequate responses to meet the needs of our people for access to information and services to help them live more healthy and productive lives.

Ladies and Gentlemen:

Last July, Heads of Government determined a far- reaching decision in progressing regional integration when it was resolved to make functional cooperation a principal vehicle through which the integration of the Community would be advanced.

This, very correctly in my view, moved the focus of our cooperation and collaboration away from the mechanics of economic integration and towards investment in human and social development of the people of the Caribbean Community.

This shift, which in no way demeans or reduces the importance of the Community’s goal of achieving a single market economy, permits the Community to develop proper mechanisms to increase the participation of non-CSME member-states like The Bahamas in all of the cooperative activities of the Community.

I believe that this continuing effort by Caribbean leaders to reorganize and redefine the Community’s institutions to better respond to the needs of the Caribbean people will ensure the sustained relevance of the Community to all our people.

Clearly, to remain relevant to all, CARICOM must become a part of the national and regional response of its member states to changing global realities including:

• the continued move toward trade and investment liberalization;
• the critical importance of education and skills training to ensure an efficient and effective labour force;
• the need to improve and expand access to information and communications technologies to improve efficiencies in our economies.

I believe our determination to make human and social development, a pillar of the Community’s work will place our greatest emphasis where it needs to be; on our youth and on their education and skills training. This will help us to ensure that future generations of Caribbean people are better prepared to assume productive roles in our societies. This is essential if we are to ensure that economic growth and development in our countries translate into job creation and entrepreneurial and social opportunity for our citizens.

Once again, I welcome you to The Bahamas.

Thank you.

CONTACT: piu@caricom.org