Director General of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Pascal Lamy said the Region needed to recommit to closer integration as the most economically viable route towards sustained development.
He was speaking at the launch of the Caribbean Community Regional Aid for Trade Strategy in Haiti on Tuesday.
Lamy said the strategy sought to build on the promise of a Region free of barriers by identifying transformative projects that support closer integration, according to a press statement from the Caricom Secretariat.
“The Caribbean needs closer regional integration. And as you celebrate the 40th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Chaguaramas this year, I think it is a fair question to ask how the Region can accelerate the pace which I witnessed some ten years ago when I was still the EU Commissioner and how it can honour the ideas of Williams, Burnham, Barrow and Manley — the founding fathers of the integration movement,” he added.
The director general said the best way to honour the architects of the Caribbean Community was to recommit to regional integration as the most successful and economically viable route towards greater and sustained development for the Region. The Region, he said, had made some initial but crucial steps in concretising the role that Aid for Trade could play in its economic development.
Lamy also identified Belize and Jamaica as having launched two excellent national strategies, both of which, he said, were profiled in Geneva, headquarters of the WTO, as examples of best practice.