CARICOM Secretary General, Dr. Edwin Carrington, at the opening session, hoped the meeting would set the tone for this year with a focus on productivity and decisiveness.

"I am looking forward to a most productive and decisive year as the 30th anniversary of our Caribbean Community", he said.

He urged greater action to ensure that decisions taken by COTED are implemented more speedily.

Lamenting the slow pace of the implementation of decisions, Carrington reminded the trade ministers of the region that the decision adopted at the 16th CARICOM Heads of Government Meeting almost eight years ago on the free movement of academics within CARICOM with a December 31, 2002 deadline for implementation, has not yet come to fruition.

He noted too that the 17th Heads of Government Meeting extended the free movement decision to professionals and media personnel but it has not been implemented as well.

"There can be no more glaring evidence of our shortcomings than an issue that strikes at the very heart of the community. Community is nothing, if not a co-mingling of peoples.

"And with this clearly in mind, in July 1995, in this very room our Heads of Government at their 16th Meeting agreed that as a first step towards facilitating the free movement of skills among member states, to implement with effect from January 1, 1996 the free movement of CARICOM nationals who are university graduates, subject to the acceptability of their credentials in the member states," Carrington said.

He added: "At its 17th meeting in Bridgetown, Barbados in 1996, the conference agreed that all member states should conclude the arrangement for providing for the facilitation of travel and free movement of university graduates prior to the next meeting of Heads of Government. Free movement should be extended to cover artistes, sports persons, musicians and media workers, as early as possible."

The Secretary General observed that there has been a failure to match decisions with implementation and told the meeting that this situation has to be reversed if the objectives of regional integration are to be achieved.

The key word, the Secretary General, stressed is "action."

"No one appreciates more than I do the necessity to ensure that intra-regional institutions and arrangements are founded on secure and transparent agreements...I am also cognisant of the fact that no country willingly enters into any agreement without attempting to secure its best interests", he said.

"The present reality, remains, however, that having negotiated, signed, and in some cases, ratified agreements, the Caribbean Community as it is today is still short of goals it has set itself towards bringing the Caribbean Single Market and Economy into operation.

"The essence of our Caribbean Community is that it cannot exist without the full and active involvement of all its member states," the Secretary General emphasised.

He said individual territories must take the requisite steps to ensure the implementation of intra-regional agreements, noting that involvement does not end with decision-making but with implementation.

He said COTED should set an example of matching decisions with implementation.

He observed that while the meeting would be focusing on the issues of the CSME, it must recognise the difficulty being faced by the region's aviation industry, emphasising that transportation is an essential component of the co-mingling of people and therefore warrants significant attention.

Recognising the volume of negotiations pertaining to international trade, Carrington urged that COTED be equipped with the necessary capacity to defend the region's interests.

"We must therefore equip our Regional Negotiating Machinery with the capacity to defend our interests and advance our ambitions in those arenas. Whatever partnership we forge in those arenas must first be anchored on the foundations we build internally in our Single Market and Economy," he said.