(CARICOM Secretariat, Georgetown)     The Council for Trade and Economic Development (COTED) has been challenged to find practical and workable solutions to matters before it. Chair of the COTED, Clifford Marica, Minister of Trade and Industry of Suriname, threw out the challenge at the opening of the Twenty-Ninth Meeting of COTED yesterday at the Pegasus Hotel, Georgetown.
The Minister also expressed the hope that clear-cut proposals could be arrived at to carry forward to the Community Council of Ministers which meets tomorrow , and subsequently to the Intersessional Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government scheduled for March.
The Minister anticipated a “turbulent and busy” year, pointing to the economic battles that Member States were fighting, the effects of the earthquake in Haiti , climate change and the internal struggles of the Community.
Welcoming delegates to the Meeting, Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, Minster of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade and International Cooperation, Guyana, called for a recommitment to the CSME.
“People must feel that CARICOM is working for them,” Minister Rodrigues-Birkett said.
Lolita Applewhaite, Deputy Secretary-General of CARICOM, in her remarks to the opening ceremony, also referred to the need for the COTED to take decisive action in the face of the current environment within which the Community finds itself.
“The need for quick, decisive action is even more important.  We are faced with the decimation of one of our most important industries – bananas.  Sugar is not far behind. There are challenges in the rum industry. Our economies are continuing to reel from the effects of the global crises. The need has never been greater for us to strengthen the operations of our Single Market,” the Deputy Secretary General said.
She also urged the Meeting to prove the “naysayers’ wrong; to affirm that the Community was alive and well; and that Member States were committed to regional integration.
The two-day meeting has a weighty 20-item agenda that includes matters relating to the status of implementation of the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME); an analysis of CARICOM Trade Performance;  Trade in Goods; Agriculture; Climate Change and Trade; and Rum.