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BRIDGETOWN, Barbados - An official of one of the United Nations agencies has expressed concern about the dearth of social data in the Caribbean region.
UNICEF’s Representative for Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean, Khin-Sandi Lwin, made the point yesterday morning while addressing those gathered for the opening of the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS), Data Analysis Workshop in the conference room of the Baobab Towers.

KINGSTON, Jamaica - Jamaicans will know today just how much the Government plans to spend during this fiscal year but already some financial analysts are warning the country to brace for a tight budget.
"It is not going to be a budget of goodies," financial analyst Colin Bullock told The Gleaner.

NASSAU, Bahamas, CMC – The Bahamas will host a one-day Regional Foreign Accounts Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) workshop next week as Caribbean countries seek to comply with new regulations outlined by the United States.
Financial Services Minister L. Ryan Pinder said that the workshop is being facilitated by the United States Treasury and Internal Revenue Services (IRS) .

KINGSTON, Jamaica, CMC – Two private sector organisations are warning that the Jamaican economy is nearing crisis level amid concerns of a rapid slide in the local currency.
At the end of trading on Tuesday, the US dollar was being sold at a record J$99.08. At the start of the year, the US dollar was trading just above the J$93 mark. 

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad - Paediatrician Dr David Bratt said in a telephone interview yesterday he is not surprised that T&T is ranked as the third fattest country in the world. While Bratt questioned the validity of the UK Daily Mail’s report, he also said he was not surprised by the report, since lifestyles have changed. “There is worse food and a decrease in exercise. There is no outdoor activity because of crime. Children are indoor on television or online. People are eating fast food,” he said as he outlined the reasons for the increase in obesity.

KINGSTON, Jamaica, CMC – The Jamaica government says it intends to significantly reduce the island’s food import bill, which stands at a staggering one billion (US) dollars.
Agriculture and Fisheries Minister Roger Clarke said the intention is to reduce the bill to US$700 in the short to medium term.“We have targeted some 8,000 acres of government lands that we intend to put into the hands of farmers and we are committed to putting in the basic infrastructure to help to get those lands into production.

Sixteen months after Haiti was supposed to hold a critical round of elections, the voting procedure remains on hold. The country’s warring political factions can’t agree on a date or the membership of the panel that would supervise the process. Even the U.N. Security Council is reaching the end of its tether with Haiti’s political leaders. It’s not as if the beleaguered Caribbean nation doesn’t have enough problems.

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados - An expert with respect to disaster management in the Caribbean is suggesting that Haiti is an excellent example of how a disasters can create an opportunity for enhancing coping capacity.
Retired head of the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA), Jeremy Collymore, told the media recently that it has been a lesson for the entire region as prior to the earthquake in Haiti in 2010, which claimed the lives of thousands of people, a simple tropical storm would result in significant loss of life.

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad - Despite all the promises of the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the European Union (EU), the countries of the Caribbean have not benefited from increased exports to EU markets or from increased investment from the EU.
The 15 Caribbean countries to which I refer are the 14 independent member states of the Caribbean Community (Caricom) and the Dominican Republic —together described as Cariforum. Each of these countries has individually signed EPA’s with the collective 27-nation EU.

KINGSTON, Jamaica - This newspaper, as a matter of principle, welcomes this week's passage by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly of the long-awaited UN treaty on trade in arms.