Thank you for your warm welcome on this my first visit to Guyana. I know I shall enjoy my short stay in this beautiful country. I am also, as Chairman of this Council, in the interesting position of having to welcome the host Minster, Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett of Guyana, to her first meeting of Community Council. Welcome, Minister!

Four months have passed since we last met in this the second highest organ of the Caribbean Community. That first meeting for the year, and coincidentally, my first innings as Chairman, had as its main focus the approval of the Work Programme and Budget of the CARICOM Secretariat, and the mobilisation and allocation of resources for the implementation of Community plans and programmes, in keeping with the responsibility of the Council for strategic planning and coordination of the Community’s work, as you have heard from the Secretary-General.

This meeting today will be concerned with another of the Council’s important mandates. It falls to the Community Council to be a reflection chamber as it discusses and seeks to synthesise the critical inputs that will form the basis of the agenda of the Conference of Heads of Government to enable that organ to fulfill its mandate, which is primarily “to determine and provide policy direction to the Community”, when it meets in Antigua and Barbuda in three weeks’ time.

At that meeting, the Conference of Heads will devote one day to discussion on Tourism, a critical sector for most of our economies in the Region. My Prime Minister has the lead responsibility within the Quasi-cabinet of the Caribbean Community for Tourism and we are anticipating that the Heads’ discussion will result in practical and concrete proposals that will contribute to the sustainable development of this important sector, in an environment of rising fuel prices which have already begun to have a serious impact on the industry.

I just returned from the Opening Ceremony of the Regional Agriculture Investment Forum. Agriculture represents another critical sector affected by rising fuel prices and on which our Region is concentrating its attention. I anticipate that, in our deliberations today, both these sectors will engage us in our preparations for the Conference.

We have a packed agenda today and time is short. In closing, I wish to thank my colleague Ministers, and the Secretary-General and Staff of the CARICOM Secretariat for their assistance and support during my tenure as Chairman of this Council, as I hand over to Antigua and Barbuda from 1 July.

I thank you.