News

CASTRIES, St. Lucia, CMC – Trade officials from the sub-regional organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) have started a weeklong workshop aimed at enhancing their capacity to formulate effective trade policies and boost participation in regional and international trade negotiations. The event is being jointly hosted by the London-based Commonwealth Secretariat and the OECS and has attracted participation from Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, the British Virgin Islands, Dominica, Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

GEORGETOWN, Guyana – The narrowness of the election results in Barbados reflects a decision on the part of voters to keep close to the parties to which they have had allegiance. Though it also suggests that Mr Owen Arthur and his team failed to persuade the electorate at large that in the context of the recession which the country has been experiencing, the proposals which Arthur, as an experienced economic practitioner, had put forward, were no more acceptable than the Democratic Labour Party’s promise of patent more of the same.

HAMILTON, Bermuda, CMC - Parliament has passed legislation allowing the One Bermuda Alliance government to borrow an additional one billion US dollars after it said it needed to act swiftly before it ran out of funds.
The Government Loans Amendment Act 2013 was approved by a majority vote  allowing the government to raise the national debt ceiling from US$1.45 billion to US$2.5 billion.

BASSETERRE, St. Kitts, CMC – Opposition Leader Mark Brantley Tuesday said he has written Governor General Sir Edmund Lawrence indicating that opposition legislators will vote in support of a motion of no confidence against Prime Minister Dr. Denzil Douglas.

ST. JOHN’S, Antigua, CMC – The International Monetary Fund (IMF) says Antigua and Barbuda has made “significant progress” towards meeting the goals of its fiscal consolidation programme and reduce debt and that it expects the economic recovery to continue in 2013. An IMF mission headed by Geoffrey Bannister has ended a visit to the island to carry out a review of the multi-million dollar Stand By Agreement, St. John’s has with the Washington based financial institution.

ST JOHN’S, Antigua – Despite Antigua & Barbuda still owing 63 per cent of its contribution to the CARICOM Development Fund (CDF), the funding agency is still in the process of developing a programme for the nation.
“Antigua & Barbuda is not yet in receipt of any country assistance programme from the CDF and that is something that we are hoping to address in this meeting, because Antigua & Barbuda has not paid up its full contribution as yet,” Ambassador Lorne McDonnough said in an interview with OBSERVER media at yesterday’s sensitisation meeting.

KINGSTON, Jamaica - JAMAICA'S Attorney General's Office yesterday indicated that it intends to call four witnesses to the stand as the Government began to present its case in the first sitting of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) in Jamaica to hear the case against the Barbadian Government by Shanique Myrie.
The court, which is being adjudicated by a panel of seven judges, is being held at the Jamaica Conference Centre in downtown Kingston and is hearing arguments from Myrie that her human rights were violated after she was subjected to two dehumanising cavity searches.

KINGSTON – Lawyers representing the Jamaica government yesterday served notice at the Shanique Myrie trial that they would present evidence to show that Barbados has engaged in a pattern of discrimination against visiting Jamaicans.
The evidence, according to lead attorney Kathy-Ann Brown, includes statistics compiled over the last five years and first-hand accounts from several people who said they were mistreated by Immigration officers.

Hugo Chávez’s folksy charm and forceful personality made him an extraordinary politician. His enviable ability to win a mass following allowed him to build a powerful political machine that kept him in office from February of 1999 until his death on Tuesday. But as a national leader, he was an abject failure who plunged Venezuela into a political and economic abyss.

KINGSTON, Jamaica - Late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez predicted, during a visit to Jamaica eight years ago, that the PetroCaribe arrangement would save participating countries billions of dollars from crude oil purchases.
Following Chávez's passing yesterday, Dr Wesley Hughes, the newly appointed chief executive officer of the PetroCaribe Development Fund, acknowledged that Jamaica has benefited significantly from the arrangement.