The tertiary-level education students participating in the Guyana Student Mission.

Twenty-five tertiary-level education students, participating in the Guyana Student Mission, left Guyana yesterday for St. Vincent and the Grenadines in an effort to expose the younger generation to the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME).

According to Mr. John Isaacs, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Trade and International Cooperation, the CSME is here to stay and is fast becoming a way of life in the CARICOM member states.

He made these remarks last Wednesday, at a briefing for the 25 students.

The Guyana Students Mission participants will stay in St. Vincent and the Grenadines for five working days learning more about the country and opportunities within the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME).

The CSME unit of CARICOM is currently executing Phase Two of this programme, which facilitates nine other such missions across the Region, under the theme ‘Students engaging the CSME through field promotion’.

Phase One on the programme was officially launched by Dr Edwin Carrington, Secretary-General of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), in Barbados on Thursday, September 11, 2008.

Then the project commenced a process of exchange and interaction among young people in the Community made possible through financial support from the European Union.

For the second phase, the 9th European Development Fund (EDF) Caribbean Integration Support Programme (CISP) has generously provided some €450,000 in development assistance.

With the financial assistance, the CARICOM Secretariat oversees the project’s implementation.

During the visits, participants of the Student Mission are expected to engage Private Sector companies and take the opportunity to meet with senior officials and their peers.

The object of this project is to engage the next generation in identifying career opportunities in wage employment, self-employment and starting a business within the CSME.

After completion of the Missions, students will assist in the preparation of a project report which will be made available to national, university and school libraries.

The 25 young adults who are part of the Guyana Student Mission were also afforded an opportunity to interact with students visiting from the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College in St. Lucia, one of the other nine student missions.

To this end, Isaacs stated that the students should make the best use of the opportunity they have been afforded and go a step further with the knowledge they acquire from their experiences.

He also expressed his appreciation to the Head of Regional Development and Integration, Delegation of the European Commission to Guyana, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Aruba and the Netherlands Antilles, Mr. Ewout Sandker, for the support of the European Commission.

Sandker, in turn, lauded the progress of the Caribbean Community towards Regional Integration.

Additionally, from the CARICOM Secretariat CSME Unit, Mr. Salas Hamilton, explained that regional integration is imperative since only by pooling resources can the CSME countries face global changes.

He added that the students in the Guyana Students Mission are the ones now tasked with guiding the fortunes of the country by exploiting the freedoms that CSME permits, which they will be exposed to during the five day stint.

The CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME) is intended to benefit the people of the Region by providing more and better opportunities to produce and sell goods and services and to attract investment. It will create one large market among the participating member states.

The main objectives of the CSME are: full use of labour (full employment); full exploitation of the other factors of production (natural resources and capital); and competitive production leading to greater variety and quantity of products and services to trade with other countries.

It is expected that these objectives will in turn provide improved standards of living and work and sustained economic development.

The key elements of the Single Market and Economy include:

* Free movement of goods and services – through measures such as eliminating all barriers to intra-regional movement and harmonising standards to ensure acceptability of goods and services traded;

* Right of Establishment – to permit the establishment of CARICOM owned businesses in any Member State without restrictions;

* A Common External Tariff – a rate of duty applied by all Members of the Market to a product imported from a country which is not a member of the market;

* Free circulation – free movement of goods imported from extra regional sources which would require collection of taxes at first point of entry into the Region and the provision for sharing of collected customs revenue;

* Free movement of Capital – through measures such as eliminating foreign exchange controls, convertibility of currencies (or a common currency) and integrated capital market, such as a regional stock exchange;

* A Common trade policy – agreement among the members on matters related to internal and international trade and a coordinated external trade policy negotiated on a joint basis; and

* Free movement of labour – through measures such as removing all obstacles to intra-regional movement of skills, labour and travel, harmonising social services (education, health, etc.), providing for the transfer of social security benefits and establishing common standards and measures for accreditation and equivalency.

At the end of the project, 225 tertiary students from all twelve CARICOM Member States presently participating in the CARICOM Single Market and Economy would be exposed to the CSME.