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Eastern Caribbean states vow to push forward regional integration

Xinhua, November 20, 2015 Adjust font size:

Heads of government from the Organization of the Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) concluded their two-day meeting in Dominica on Thursday, reaffirming their efforts to advance regional integration.

Addressing the opening ceremony of the 62nd Meeting of the OECS Authority, Didacus Jules, Director-General of the nine-member regional bloc's secretariat, called for a closer knitted OECS with common voices for the needs of the people of all its member states.

"We meet today at a time when extremes are becoming the new norm whether in the conduct of nations or circumstances of nature," he said, indicating fundamental changes in the world context demand joint efforts among small countries in the Caribbean to continue their pursuit of common good.

The director general said there are also positive changes as south-south cooperation is on increase, with more institutionalized forms and structures opening new avenues for foreign direct investments from the south and new options for development support.

The emergence of the initiative on the construction of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road (the Belt and Road Initiative), the emergence of the BRICS (an association of five major emerging national economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and the establishment of the new hundreds-of-billion-dollar development bank can break the hegemony of western multilaterals, he said, adding the OECS members could seize the opportunity to push regional integration ahead.

Similar sentiments were echoed by Prime Minister of St. Kitts and Nevis Timothy Harris and his counterpart in Grenada Keith Mitchell.

"Today I come as a friend of regional integration, to defend those efforts at deepening and broadening efforts of integration. We are better when we work together," Harris said.

"The road ahead will not be easy. At the sub-regional and regional levels, coordination, cooperation and collective action continue to be our best strategies for our survival. We must continue to be ready to stand in the gap for each other," said Mitchel.

Prime Minister of Dominica Roosevelt Skerrit believed that the region should work on as a unit, while making special reference to the establishment of a regional health insurance scheme.

"It is important for us to look at the issue of health insurance as a region," he said, pointing out that too many people in the region do not have insurance nor the funds to finance their health care.

The OECS, established in 1981, is now a nine-member bloc comprising Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Anguilla and the British Virgin Islands are associate members of the OECS. Endi