Distinguished Heads of Regional Institutions and Organisations
Other Distinguished Delegates
Deputy Secretary-General and other Staff of the Secretariat
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen

As always it gives me very great pleasure as Secretary-General of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) to say a few words in welcoming you all to the Headquarters of the CARICOM Secretariat. It is good to see so many of you who were here last year, back with us and looking none the worst, for the wear and tear of the last year.

Allow me to extend a special welcome to those who are attending this meeting for the first time, and in that vein, I wish to welcome the new Vice Chancellor of the University of Guyana. We are very pleased to have you on board and we look forward to your usual outstanding contribution.

This Meeting of the Regional Institutions and Organisations has established itself very quickly as a key event on the Community’s calendar. At three years old it may barely be entering pre-school stage but already its output has marked it as having university promise!

The synergy and the interaction envisaged when this Meeting was first conceived is already manifesting itself. This is clearly so, for example, with the work of the clusters which will be examined later today and with the Memorandum of Understanding signed last year between two agencies represented here today – CARICAD and IMPACS. They have shown the way as they move to implement their agreement and they are surely an example for others to follow.

Implementation which has historically been considered the Achilles heel of the Community could rightly be called the watchword of these meetings. For, it is on the devising of methods of implementation of decisions, particularly by the Heads of Government and on the execution of those methods that the success of this Forum will be determined.

As I said in this very room last year at our gathering, “meetings such as these are a recognition that more needs to be done in the struggle to deliver on the promise of integration; to deliver on the promise of a Community For All; to deliver on the goal of a just, viable, prosperous and secure society for all our people.”

We will have a look down the road of delivery in a few minutes as we receive the Reports of the six clusters identified at the last Meeting. This, which is in essence pioneering work, could provide the Community with a template for collaboration in implementing decisions of its Organs and Bodies.

The Agenda for the next day and a half allows ample scope for us to examine modes of cooperation and for devising innovative means to accomplish the stated goal of a just, viable, prosperous and secure society for all our people.

Finally, it is critical in going forward, that we look at this enterprise as a joint one with all parties being involved, all lending their skills, all pulling in the same direction against the dead weight of individual action.

With these few words, I reiterate my warm welcome to you, thank you for being here and look forward to the outcome of this Meeting.