Ambassador Lolita Applewhaite, acting Secretary-General of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), yesterday urged the CARICOM Council of Ministers, meeting for their 27th session, to make specific determinations on the work programme and budget of the Secretariat, as well as the agenda for the forthcoming 22nd Inter-sessional Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government in Grenada next month.
Yesterday’s meeting, chaired by Senator Deneth Modeste, Minister of State in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Environment, Foreign Trade and Export Development of Grenada, was the first for the second highest decision-making body in CARICOM, and the first ministerial meeting for 2011.
And, the Council Chair, while echoing the sentiments of the Acting Secretary-General as it relates to the pivotal role of the Council, in the governance and management of the affairs of CARICOM, also called the on meeting to consolidate and begin to demonstrate progress in the area of Information and Communication Technologies for Development.
According to him, ICT is an area of importance for the community, as it looks towards the future.
The Grenadian minister recalled that the Conference of Heads of Government, at its 30th meeting in July, 2009, in Guyana, had mandated the preparation of an ICT action plan.
The importance of this sector was further emphasised during the deliberations of the 31st Meeting of the Conference in July, 2010, in Jamaica, when among the recommendations of the Prime Ministerial Committee on External Negotiations that were endorsed, was that ICT must be one of the areas to be included in a major CARICOM Aid for Trade Project to be presented to international development partners.
Ambassador Applewhaite, in her remarks, urged that the meeting seek to find solutions as an integrated whole, given the challenging environment with which the community is faced, and the fact that member states are struggling to emerge from the depths of the global financial and economic crises, to grapple with the volatility in one of our major economic sectors– tourism– and to counter the troubling inability of the international community to fulfil their financial pledges to rebuild Haiti.
“The onus is on this council, as the first to meet for the year, to show the way for the others to follow by dispensing its obligations in such a manner, with a unity of purpose and action, that guides those that follow in the year ahead,” she said.
And alluding to the pivotal role of the Community Council in the governance and management of the community in the context of the  Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas, the Acting Secretary-General reminded that the execution of such responsibilities, specifically strategic planning, and the strengthening of the consultative process among member states, assume even more significance in the challenging social, financial, environmental and international external relations environment of this second decade of the 21st century.
She noted as well that many of the challenges which they sought to grapple with over the past year, continue to plague the
community.

Minister Modeste said the meeting has the opportunity to see the progress made with respect to several of the matters which engaged its attention over the past six months, and to chart the way forward in other initiatives of the community.

On this note, he acknowledged the stewardship and leadership provided by the outgoing Chairman of the Community Council, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, Dr. Kenneth Baugh, in particular in the area of governance of the community.