Integration a journey, not a destination – PM Stuart

Prime Minister Freundel Stuart has told a group of visiting University of the West Indies (UWI) students that they should not see the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Single Market and Economy (CSME) as an end in itself, while warning that the regional integration movement, though important, will never come to any final destination.

“It is not, and it has never been, a destination,” Stuart cautioned.

“It has always been a journey and there will always be aspects of the regional integration movement on which we can improve and, therefore, there can never come a time when we can throw our arms up in jubilation that we have, at last, become regionally integrated and that we have nothing else to do,” the Prime Minister told the 19 UWI students, who were accompanied by a CARICOM Youth Ambassador. The visit to his official residence took place last week but was only reported by the Barbados Government Information Service in a release today.

In response to the many individuals who have been asking about the status of the CSME and where it is going, Stuart, who has lead prime ministerial responsibility for the CSME’s creation, said it was “a means by which we all hope and intend to bring the people of the Caribbean closer together”.

He emphasized that while the regional integration movement was of very critical importance to the future of the Caribbean the “primary, overriding objective of the CSME was the integration of the people of the Caribbean by whatever means regional governments and regional leaders were prepared to use”.

Read more at: Barbados Today