CARICOM URGED TO WELCOME NEW FORMS OF INTEGRATION

Kingstown, September 3 (PL)- Prime Minister of Saint Vicent and the Grenadines, Ralph Gonsalves, urged the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) to renew its founding principles and open to new forms of integration with other countries outside the bloc.

If the CARICOM is in fact set to continue, we can see other poles of integration in the area and the Community has to reach an agreement with those poles on its own interest, said Gonsalves in a speech.

In this regard, he cited the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), to which three CARICOM members belong (Saint Vincent, Dominica and Barbuda), and the Agreement of Economic Partnership with the European Union, reached by Jamaica, Haiti, Bahamas and the Dominican Republic. "The integration movement is being altered in our own eyes, not only because of what is happening here in the region, but also outside the region," he said.

In his opinion, the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States has gained force in the wake of the establishment of its own economic union in January, 2011, and of approving new governing structures, including a legislative assembly.

"It is time for the community to discuss these issues impartially to brace for the new conditions of the regional integration movement," he said.

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