Wednesday, June 28, 2006

GEORGETOWN, Guyana: Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, St Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, and St Vincent and the Grenadines will sign onto the Single Market on 30 June according to Prime Minister of Dominica, Roosevelt Skerrit.

Speaking to the issue of the Single Market during a press briefing in Georgetown, Guyana on Monday 26 June, Skerrit said that the six CARICOM Member States were now satisfied that the regional Development Fund will become operational.

“We are very optimistic about the CSME,” Skerrit said, while noting the operation of the Fund, for which a contribution formula had been finalised earlier, was of particular concern to the Less Developed Countries of the Region.

In expressing his country’s gratitude for CARICOM’s support of Dominica’s programme of stabilisation and recovery, Skerrit said Dominica had recorded a 3.5 per cent growth rate over the last two years. He highlighted the significance of the Single Market and the importance of Free Movement to the development of industries as “absolutely important and necessary,” and stated, “we have to facilitate each other.”

He pointed out that given the pressures now brought to bear on the Region by the international community, integration was more than ever necessary. In the context of human resource demands across the Region under the dispensation of the Single Market, he said, “It is important hat each of us embraces the CSME.”

The Prime Minister of Dominica is the lead Head of Government with responsibility for Labour including Free Movement of Skills, in the CARICOM Heads of Government Quasi cabinet.

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