Thank you, Mr. Chairman

Hon. Clive Mullings, President of CTU and Minister of Energy, Mining and Telecommunications of Jamaica
Hon. Terry Lister, Minister of Energy, Telecommunications and E-Commerce of Bermuda
Other Ministers of Government
Dr. Hamadoun Toure, Secretary-General of the ITU
Ms. Bernadette Lewis, Secretary-General of CTU
Delegates, Representatives of Member States and the Private Sector
Representatives of the Media

There could be no more apt venue to discuss functional cooperation and a connected Caribbean than Bermuda, an Associate Member of CARICOM. I extend to the Government and people of Bermuda my sincere appreciation for the warm welcome we have received, which belies the blustery and cool weather outside!

It is worth recalling that at the last regular meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government in Barbados in July 2007, the leaders issued the Needham Point Declaration entitled “Functional Co-operation: A Community For All”, which places functional cooperation among Member States of the Community at the top of the regional agenda. The subject I was asked to address today, therefore, “Functional Integration: A Caribbean Imperative for Development”, fits appropriately into the context of that priority area.

All CARICOM institutions have a critical role to play as we move to develop our Community through functional cooperation, and the CTU is a prime example of this. Minister Mullings referred to the rapprochement of CTU with the CARICOM Secretariat and I should mention in this connection the historical meeting the CARICOM Secretary-General held with 22 CARICOM institutions, including the CTU, in October last year.

Established in 1989 by the Conference of Heads of Government in Nassau, The Bahamas, the treaty governing the operations of the CTU has at its core the correction of : “the fragmented policy frame of telecommunications sectors of member countries; the problems of frequency incompatibility between and among member countries; the lack of Caribbean input in major international issues, which disregarded rights and sovereignty of the Caribbean states, thereby denying them opportunity; and the absence of a coordinating machinery to facilitate an increase in the impact of resources and assistance for Caribbean telecommunications development.”

All of these require a high level of functional co-operation and, in that regard, I refer to the draft Report of the Task Force on Functional Co-operation which was established at the July 2007 meeting. That draft report identifies four modalities of functional co-operation. These are: sharing policies and programmes; dissemination of information; human resource development; and monitoring and evaluation. All of these activities and objectives are embedded in the core tasks of the CTU.

Further and most importantly, it is the telecommunications sector which can and must play a determining role in the success of functional co-operation as a means of ensuring not only sustainable development of our Region but fulfilling the goal of “A Community for All”. For how else are we going to share policies and programmes, disseminate information, develop our human resources regionally and monitor and evaluate the progress of our integration movement but through the platform of telecommunications and ICT?

It has taken us four decades to return to the moorings of the regional integration process and to recognise the need “to make functional cooperation a priority within the Community as one of the principal means by which the benefits of the integration movement are distributed through the length and breadth of the Community, including its Associate Members, and among all its peoples.”

In 1963 when the late Dr Eric Williams, the then Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, assembled his colleagues at the first Conference of Heads of Government of the Commonwealth Caribbean, that meeting was not about trade in goods nor was it about economic integration. It was to discuss ways of ensuring that the common services established in the years leading up to and during the Federation were kept alive. These included, the University of the West Indies, the West Indies Shipping Council and, later, the Caribbean Meteorological Service. In other words, the areas of functional co-operation were the bedrock of the post-Federation integration movement and hence imperative for the development of our region.

Five years later, in 1968, the deliberate process of regional economic integration began with the formation of the Caribbean Free Trade Area (CARIFTA) with its principal focus on trade in goods. This was deepened into the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM) in 1973 which strengthened the economic integration arrangements, included a foreign policy component, and, for the first time, formally incorporated the concept of functional cooperation.

In 1989, (the same year the decision was taken to establish the CTU) the Heads of Government took another major decision to create a CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME). The Single Market became operational in 2006, with its essential characteristics being free trade in goods and services, movement of labour and capital, and the right of establishment. The Single Economy has begun to gather momentum with the completion date set for 2015. This would involve the harmonisation of monetary, fiscal and economic policies including financial policy harmonisation and the adoption of a CARICOM Financial Services Agreement, investment and incentive policy harmonisation, and sectoral policy harmonisation with respect to industry, agriculture and transportation. It is also notable that the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the formation of the Information Society are scheduled for 2015.

It is clear, then, that if we accept that Regional integration is an important strategy for optimising the development possibilities of the Caribbean Community, the advantages of basing the process on a pooling of resources becomes an integral part of that strategy.

In that regard, ladies and gentlemen, functional cooperation has been an important feature of the activities carried out by the Caribbean Community over the past 35 years and, at this juncture of our history, the decision has been taken to place it squarely as both an engine of development and a means of ensuring that the benefits of integration are equitably distributed among all our Member States and Associate Members, of which Bermuda is one.

When we speak of functional co-operation, there are areas identified both in the original Treaty of Chaguaramas of 1973 and the Revised Treaty adopted in 2001. The original Treaty identified the following areas: air transportation, meteorological science and hurricane insurance, health, intra-regional technical assistance, intra-regional public service management, education and training, broadcasting and information culture, harmonisation of the law and legal systems of Member States, the position of women in Caribbean society, travel within the Region, labour administration and industrial relations, technological and scientific research, and social security. It also spoke of other common services and areas of functional co-operation as might from time to time be determined by the Conference of Heads of Government.

The Revised Treaty called for the more efficient operation of common services and activities and singled out health, education, transportation and telecommunications as activities for intensified co-operation.

Just a glance through the identified areas throws up two immediate observations: first, the breadth of the issues, and secondly, their impact on the quality of life of our citizens. It is the latter which has emerged within recent times as the most important facet of the development and integration process, that is the improvement of the quality of life of the people of the Caribbean Community. For what is the point of having economic growth, healthy balance of trade positions, trade surpluses and even increased employment if the people remain mired in poverty or cannot enjoy the benefits of those economic and trade achievements?

The new dispensation is determined to integrate the concept and practice of functional cooperation into all areas of activities carried out within the Community. This is based on the recognition that, while the deepening of the integration process, as envisaged in the CSME, would generate many benefits for the Region, it might also involve some transitional costs both economic and social to some members of the Community. Functional cooperation is therefore seen as a means of ensuring that the benefits of the Community are equitably distributed among its members.

It is not as if CARICOM is unique in this thrust among Regional integration groupings. The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), for example has sought to increase the profile of functional cooperation in its overall operation to enable it to generate shared prosperity for all its members. As the Secretary-General of that Organisation has stated, ‘functional co-operation has become a way of integrating ASEAN’s political and economic goals with its social, cultural, scientific, technological and environmental objectives.’ Substitute CARICOM for ASEAN and I could not have said it better myself.

Ladies and Gentlemen, a closer look at the identified areas will also bring to light the fact that among them are some of the prime drivers for economic development. The most important factor in development is the quality of your human resources both in terms of their skills and training as well as their health and well-being. These are two of the principal areas within the realm of functional co-operation.

In the case of training, collaboration is being pursued among the major universities in the Community which would help to ensure that the graduates from any of them would meet the required, if not uniform, standard. Outside of academics, the recently launched Caribbean Vocational Qualification (CVQ) will confer a standard acceptable to all for our artisans. And we all know of the contribution of the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) over the past 35 years. More recently, the Heads established the Caribbean Knowledge and Learning Network (CKLN) with the objective of working with all tertiary education institutions in the Caribbean to strengthen their capacity to develop and deliver e-learning programmes and courses at a distance to Caribbean nationals wherever they may live; and providing a Regional Education Research Network (C@ribNET) connecting all Caribbean countries, so that institutions can collaborate and partner in the development and dissemination of knowledge to Caribbean people.

In the case of health, the true leader in the field of functional co-operation, the Caribbean Co-operation in Health Initiative (CCHIII), is in its third phase and has served this Region well both in reducing the cost of pharmaceuticals through bulk-buying and also in working together to eliminate some infectious diseases. Another example in the area of health is the Pan-Caribbean partnership in the fight against HIV and AIDS (PANCAP).

These two areas (education and health) offer lessons and serve as the benchmarks which the Community must attain in other areas as it moves to enhance the benefits available via the integration process. For us, separated as we are by miles of water, transportation is another major determining factor in the strengthening of integration. Success in co-operation in this field has so far eluded us but given its critical role we must apply our well known creative abilities to the task of finding a solution.

The telecommunications sector has emerged as a dominant force in driving development. Allied with transportation, connectivity (and with it the ability to transmit and transfer knowledge with relative ease) will provide this Community’s human resources with the necessary tools to build and sustain our society. Functional co-operation in the telecommunications sector is therefore a must and would contribute enormously to enhancing the level of integration and development in the Region.

This, of course, brings the specific mandates and work of the CTU and other regional institutions working in the areas of ICT and telecommunications into sharper focus.

The mandates of the CTU to which I referred earlier still remain pressing areas of work to be completed in our Region. The harmonisation of the telecommunications policy framework in member countries; the need for comprehensive direction with regard to spectrum use and management; and the need for sustained Caribbean input in major international telecommunications issues are areas which stand out on CTU’s agenda.

One quick look at the issues being discussed daily at the international level shows that the world has come to a quiet consensus that none of our development goals and plans can be achieved successfully without the strategic application of ICT, which includes telecommunications.

There will, of course, always be new and emerging issues in ICT which we as a region will need to deal with under the heading of functional cooperation. One which immediately comes to mind is the area of Internet Governance. Some of the areas related to Internet Governance fall squarely within the ambit of the CTU and I am pleased to know that the CTU has started to advance work in those areas. I also take note and applaud the CTU initiative entitled: “The Connected Caribbean Initiative” which seeks, as I understand it, to:

Facilitate inter-working of regional governments;

Connect and strengthen organisations, communities and individuals working on or In support of functional Caribbean integration;

Provide a framework to foster development, Integration and expansion of regional stakeholder Groups; and

Support Caribbean governments in achieving the MDGs.

I mentioned earlier some examples of functional cooperation in the Region. In addition, I would like to posit that perhaps the formation of the Information Society provides us with one of the best road maps for advancing more rapidly functional cooperation. The preparation and continued implementation of the plan of action of the Information Society is structured to ensure that all levels of society (public, private sector and civil society) play their part.

Functional cooperation done well would unleash the potential which is currently stifled in those of our countries which have no ready access to tertiary education, for example. It could provide the platform for a regional stock market. It could provide real-time medical services in traditionally neglected areas. In other words, co-operation in telecommunications could transform this Community into what the Heads of Government envisioned as a “Community for All”.

Your role as members of the CTU and the Caribbean Community is therefore important and pivotal. The Region will rely on your counsel and advice as it seeks the timely implementation of the CSME and of the information Society.

In conclusion, I wish to quote directly from the words of the report of Task Force on Functional cooperation:

“Functional co-operation is essential for the optimal performance of the Community. It supports and facilitates all aspects of the Community’s work, including the economic, and serves to enhance the possibility of that work contributing to the well-being of the Community, the spirit of identity and the building of solidarity.”

Thank you.