MONTEGO BAY, St James – The Caribbean Community’s inaugural joint sub-committee meetings on external trade negotiations and the single market economy ended on a high note on Tuesday with consensus by four of the region’s heads on a blueprint for the region’s future trade relations.

“Our discussion proceeded against the backdrop of the Bicentennial anniversary of the abolition of the TransAtlantic Slave trade, our determination to eliminate poverty in the shortest possible time and to provide an improved quality of life for our Caribbean people, in particular the poor,” Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller told the press in a briefing following the close of the two-day talks.

The consensus, which centred on a report published by the University of the West Indies’ Professor Norman Girvan last October, concerns the plan of action and timetabling of goals for the establishment of the single market economy which, according to Barbados’s prime minister, Owen Arthur, should be ready for implementation by next year.

Entitled “Towards a Single Market Economy and a Single Development Vision”, the document outlines the basis for decisions that will be taken by the Heads of government on the direction, content and priorities of the Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME). These issues will be further deliberated at the Community’s 18th intersessional heads of government meeting in St Vincent and the Grenadines next week, according to Arthur, who chaired the sub-committee meeting on the CSME along with Simpson Miller, who chaired the sub-committee meeting on external trade relations. Simpson Miller, who along with Arthur and prime ministers Ralph Gonsalves and Patrick Manning of St Vincent and the Grenadines and Trinidad and Tobago respectively sat in on Tuesday’s media briefing, said Caricom negotiators had been instructed to:

. continue negotiations on the Economic Partnership Agreement with the European Union with a view to completing on schedule, a progressive agreement in support of the region’s development;

. continue detailed work on enhanced relations with North America.

To this end, Simpson Miller said the community had endorsed the conference on the Caribbean scheduled for June 16-19 in Washington. The conference, which will examine a host of issues relating to the Caribbean/US relations will, according to Simpson-Miller, bring Caribbean and US leaders as well as the private sector and Non-Governmental Organisations together to focus on relations in trade, investment, security and social development.

The prime ministers who sat in on Tuesday’s talks said the Community was committed to continued exploration of the potential for the establishment of a regional carrier as well as a common regional currency.