PM Briceño Discusses Pro Tem Presidency of SICA

Prime Minister John Briceño

Earlier this month, the pro tem presidency of the Central American Integration System (SICA) was conferred on Prime Minister John Briceño.  As provisional head of the regional organization, there are four primary areas that he will be addressing during the next six months.  High on that list are issues of food security and climate change.

Prime Minister John Briceño

“There are four main things that we want to address.  One is food security.  We are lucky, we have food security and that’s not a challenge for us.  But for many of our Central American countries it is a problem.  Food security, climate change is another one and climate change.  The developed countries have said that they are going to make, I think was it a hundred billion dollars a year and they have still not complied with that.  So we have to find ways to put pressure on these countries to be able to do that and then also we’re happy that finally they have agreed to the loss and damage which is, for instance, we had a loss and damage situation right here with Hurricane Lisa, that there should be a fund where we can get grants at very, very, very low costs and long-term financing to be able to rebuild.  At COP27, they finally agreed to that.  Now we need to find a mechanism how we can put that in place.  But another important thing that we want to do during my chairmanship is that we want to be able to find ways how CARICOM and SICA can work even closer.  The markets of CARICOM and SICA is about four hundred million dollars, so if we can have more collaboration between the two regions and access that four hundred million dollar market as opposed to just being importing from outside these two regions, we then could create even more wealth for our people.”