P.M. has pre-summit interview on Open Your Eyes

Early this morning, Prime Minister Barrow also sat down with Channel’s Five William Neal and Marleni Cuellar at Port of Spain for a live televised interview just before going into a CARICOM caucus. Barrow, as Chairman of CARICOM, said he intended to address the banking sector, trade issues as well as the flood of deportees from the U.S. to the Caribbean.

Dean Barrow, CARICOM Chairman
“The question of deportees, that will come up in the bilateral meeting between CARICOM and the U.S. The correlation between the increase in violent crime in all of our societies and returning deportees is well documented and we have for some time been saying to the U.S, look there has to be some kind of cap on the number of deportees that you will send back to our countries. There has to be some kind of safeguards even with some off the repatriation that you will do. So that’s going to be very important. A kind of general overview of the landscape of issues that affect the region, affect the hemisphere with a call for action in particular areas, some of which will include climate change, some thing that affects us fundamentally, a call for additional resources to be unlocked so that countries such as Belize can be better able to cope with climate change. As I said, the whole business of trying to outlaw international or offshore financial jurisdictions is fundamental to our economic survival, so I’m certainly going to flag that during the course of the presentation and generally this business of the need for concessionary resources for small countries that are struggling with indebtedness compounded now by the global financial crisis.”

“The bilateral meeting between CARICOM, and the U.S. on the U.S. side will be headed by the president. We will be no doubt sitting across from each other. It really is a matter of trying to discuss the serious issues, trying to get commitments from the United States with respect to those issues and again, the trading arrangements between the region and the U.S. The extension of the privileges we enjoy under the Caribbean Based Recovery Act and the Caribbean Based Trade Preferences Act, there is currently in place a situation in which a number of our products can go into the United States duty free. That sort of arrangement is under threat, under assault because of the whole globalization, liberalization, trade liberalization thing. And so in talking to the president we will be asking that everything be done on the part of the administration to encourage congress to maintain and perhaps even expand the trading arrangements that the U.S. has in the region. So while there is no doubt that the president’s personal charisma is always a factor in things, I think we are looking more at the business end of matters in trying to get some structured, practical, helpful arrangements for our region finalized with president Obama.”