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PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad - The Caribbean Local Economic Development Project (Cariled) has a new programme directo. Alix Yule will direct the six year CIDA funded Local Economic Development (LED) project within 14 Caribbean countries.  She will first be based at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) headquarters in Ottawa, Canada. 

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad - Senior government officials are in the final leg of negotiations with Guatemalan officials to sign off on a Partial Scope Agreement. The T&T delegation includes senior officials of the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Investment; the Customs and Excise Division of the Ministry of Finance and the Economy, Solicitor General Department, Ministry of Food Production, exporTT, Trinidad and Tobago Manufacturers Association and Trinidad and Tobago Chamber of Industry and Commerce.

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad - There is no safe place in the world. That was the response yesterday from Carlos Vogeler, regional director for the Americas, World Tourism Organisation (WTO) in response to questions about the double bombing at the Boston marathon and reports that 50 tourists aboard a bus were robbed in St Lucia.

 KINGSTON. Jamaica - 'A dark night of the soul' is how National Security Minister Peter Bunting described what some are calling his meltdown in an unusually candid speech saying divine intervention was necessary to defeat crime in Jamaica.

KINGSTON. Jamaica - Leadership is often a difficult, lonely process that is not given to being franchised out.
But judging from her handling of the Richard Azan debacle, this is a concept that Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller does not find opportune, at this time, to embrace. The PM, instead, uses her Cabinet as insulation.

KINGSTON. Jamaica - THE International Monetary Fund (IMF) lowered its 2013 growth forecast for Jamaica, with the country now projected to grow by .5 per cent, down from the one per cent estimate in October 2012.
But the country's economy should strengthen in 2014, with real GDP growth of 1.2 per cent, according to the fund in its latest edition of the World Economic Outlook (WEO).

ST. GEORGE’S, Grenada, CMC – Prime Minister Dr. Keith Mitchell presented his first national budget in six years outlining a series of measures he hopes would stimulate a sluggish economy even as he announced cuts in government expenditure for the next 12 months.
In presenting the EC$711 million (One EC dollar = US$0.37 cents) fiscal package to Parliament on Tuesday, Mitchell, who is also the finance minister, said that current revenues are projected at EC$448.2 million, while capital expenditure is projected at EC$262.4 million.

KINGSTON, Jamaica - OUR commendation goes to fellow columnist Sir Ronald Sanders for his insightful and descriptive piece on the Cariforum states and the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the EU (Sunday Observer 7th April ).

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, CMC –Aviation officials from the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and South America will meet here in May to discuss initiatives aimed at developing air links between the regions, Trinidad and Tobago’s Foreign Minister Winston Dookeran has said.
Addressing the opening of the 14th annual Caribbean Conference on Sustainable Tourism Development (STC-14) here on Monday night, Dookeran, said the meeting would seek to consolidate some of the measures proposed in the San Juan Accord for the regional air transport sector that had been agreed upon five years ago.

KINGSTON, Jamaica - Britain will this week bury Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister who transformed her country, for better or worse.