| Minister
of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade K.D. Knight has
emphasised that the Caribbean Single Market and Economy
(CSME) will have very positive spin offs for the country
through job creation, and would create more opportunities
for small and medium sized enterprises.
Minister Knight along with other representatives of
the Ministry was speaking at a recent meeting hosted
by businesspersons of the Clarendon Chamber of Commerce
at the Hotel Versalles. The entrepreneurs wanted to
understand the impact of the CSME on the viability
of their enterprises.
“When we look at the end result of this…we’re
going to be able to have the opportunity to create
wealth for countries and very importantly to create
jobs for us and at this point it is critical that
I make the point that this is not about big companies
alone, this is about small and medium enterprises
and one of the things we know is that small and medium
enterprises create lots of jobs that are sustainable,”
Minister Knight said.
He said the CSME would impact positively on the masses
of secondary and tertiary level students who would
be seeking employment Mr. Knight also noted that the
CSME would create a wider market place of about 14
million persons within the 15 member countries of
CARICOM.
He
noted further that the CSME would facilitate the ease
of doing business with other Caribbean territories
and would offer opportunities for market integration,
regionally and globally.
This Single Market, he said, would primarily facilitate
the free movement of goods, services, capital and
people, and already five categories of persons including
university graduates, media workers, sports persons,
artistes and musicians would have the right to seek
employment in any CSME participating state.
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