CARIBBEAN-TRADE-CARICOM and US trade officials examining ways of improving trade.

GEORGETOWN -- Dominica's ambassador to the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), Felix Gregoire, Friday, said that ninth meeting of the CARICOM-United States Trade and Investment Council (TIC) provides an opportunity to assess initiatives to promote the sustainable economic development of member countries through trade.

Gregoire, who is co- chairing the one-day meeting with Ambassador Jayme White, the Deputy US Trade Representative, said it has been 40 years that Washington established the Caribbean Basin initiative (CBI) through the enactment of the Caribbean Basin Economic Recovery Act.

Ambassador Felix Gregoire

'We therefore, welcome this timely high-level re-engagement with the United States, in the context of our trade and investment framework agreement. It is an opportunity for us to share with the United States our assessment of initiatives to promote the sustainable economic development of our member states through trade. '

Gregoire said that with the Caribbean-US Trade and Investment Council having last met in 2019, the meeting also provides an opportunity to reset te existing trade and investment relationship to ensure that together, 'we expand economic opportunities, and fostering the sustainable growth of our Caribbean Community'.

Gregoire said that the small economies of the Caribbean are first, foremost and necessarily very open economies which make them particularly vulnerable to exogenous shocks.

' We have limited internal markets on which to build competitive industries. We have limited sources of domestic investment. We are therefore necessarily dependent on trade and foreign investment for economic transformation and growth.'

He said the region also faces the existential threat of climate change, both through catastrophic natural shocks, and the seemingly inexorable deterioration of the global environment, a deterioration to which our community makes an insignificant contribution.

'Nevertheless in the face of these existing vulnerabilities, the Community is making a determined effort to strengthen and deepen regional integration through the expanding implementation of its single market and economy, the CSME.'

Gregoire said that the CSME is intended to lessen the disadvantages of small size and catalyse the more effective insertion of CARICOM economies into the global economy.

He said the CSME, which allows for the free movement of goods, skills, labour and services across the region, and its individual member states will still...