CARICOM Secretary-General, Edwin Carrington

The team was due to arrive in the country Sunday and will leave on Wednesday. The Community Secretariat said during the mission, taking place on the initiative of the Secretary-General, the team will hold discussions with the President of Suriname Runaldo Venetiaan, members of his cabinet, members of Parliament and other government officials regarding various aspects of the CSME initiative.

Suriname is one of the six Member States of the Community already participating in the CARICOM Single Market which came into being on 1 January 2006.

According to the CARICOM Secretariat, the Secretary-General said on Sunday that the visit is a timely one given the recent flooding in the country.

"It will give us an opportunity to get a sense of the effect of the flooding and better enable us to render assistance to Suriname," the CARICOM Secretariat quoted Carrington.

Included in the Secretariat team will be four members of the Technical Working Group on Governance (TWG) established by the Conference of Heads of Government. Chairman of the TWG, Professor Vaughan Lewis and his colleagues will meet with President Venetiaan as part of the group's mandate to meet with Heads of Government as part of the process of preparing its recommendations.

The team also plans to interact with the private sector and other civil society groups in Suriname with respect to their experiences to date with the operation of the Single Market. The team will take the opportunity to highlight, for the Surinamese public, opportunities available under the CSME.