News

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, CMC – The International Labour Organization (ILO) Wednesday said that new labour indicators for Latin America and the Caribbean portray a region that is experiencing its finest moment despite the crisis in other areas. “We now face the challenge of taking advantage of this platform to remedy deficits that dampen prospects for development,” said Elizabeth Tinoco, ILO Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean.

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad - The region’s fiscal balances for 2012 deteriorated compared to 2011, mainly due to increased public spending.
This according to the Economic Commission for Latin America and Caribbean’s (Eclac) report on the region’s growth prospects for 2013.
It said in Latin America, primary balances (before interest payments on the public debt) averaged a deficit of 0.3 per cent points of gross domestic product (GDP) compared to a surplus of 0.2 per cent in 2011.

ST. JOHN’S, Antigua, CMC – The Antigua and Barbuda government says it is designing a project that offers temporary economic relief to unemployed people in the country.
Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer said that the three year project, which is being established with technical and financial assistance from the World Bank, will benefit at least 1,200 low-income unemployed people between the ages 17 and 50.

KINGSTON, Jamaica - A perfect example of the shortage of vision affecting CARICOM governments is their dropping of the ball on the Leucaena project in the early 1980s. Ambassador Byron Blake, former CARICOM assistant secretary general, reminded us of that last month during a sitting of the Jamaica Observer Monday Exchange. For those who missed it, the Leucaena project was established in response to the energy crisis of the late 1970s.

KINGSTON, Jamaica - GORDON ‘Butch’ Stewart yesterday urged Jamaicans to hold each other’s hands and face the challenges of 2013 in an exemplary spirit of unity and teamwork. Stewart, the Caribbean’s leading hotelier, said co-ordinated teams win big games, and if Jamaicans work as a team, by “helping each other, protecting each other, and supporting each other, as never before, there is very little that we cannot achieve together”.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s battle with cancer threatens $7 billion of subsidized oil exports that help prop up Cuba’s economy and contain inflation in Caribbean nations from Jamaica to the Bahamas. Chavez, hospitalized in Havana after a fourth operation, sent Cuba $3.6 billion of oil in 2011 through the Petrocaribe program that serves 70 million people across Central America and the Caribbean. Cuba failed to make discoveries in the first offshore drilling effort since 2004 as Repsol SA, Petroliam Nasional Bhd. and Petroleos de Venezuela SA reported dry wells.

The Haitian government is "vehemently" protesting travel advisories recently issued by the United States and Canada.
The U.S. State Department last week strengthened a travel advisory on Haiti. It warned Americans planning to visit the Caribbean nation about kidnappings, robbery, lawlessness and cholera. Canada followed with a similar statement.

ROSEAU, Dominica, CMC –Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit says he intends writing Britain later this month seeking permission for Dominica to sever ties with the London-based Privy Council in order to join the Trinidad-based Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ).
“This month, January 2013 God’s willing, we shall write formally to the British government indicating to them our intention of severing ties with the Privy Council and seeking their agreement on that,” Skerrit said.

GEORGETOWN, Guyana, CMC – Haiti’s President Michel Martelly has started his six-month role as chairman of the 15-member Caribbean Community (CARICOM) grouping pledging to help CARICOM unite and overcome its economic problems as well as improve the socio-economic wellbeing of the region’s population.

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados - THE YEAR 2012 has seen challenges and opportunities, new beginnings and familiar setbacks, victories and defeats. The most glaring example is the attempts by the United Nations to end the bloody 21-month-old Syrian conflict through diplomacy which have been a resounding failure. There is little reason to expect a quick change given the Russian-United States disagreement on Syria.