PM Golding Returns Today From Important Economic Talks

Prime Minister Bruce Golding is expected home this evening, after attending meetings with CARICOM Heads of Government in Belize, last week, and with U.S. private investment company, Tavistock International, in Florida over the week-end.
Mr. Golding went to Florida Friday evening for talks with representatives of Tavistock, and financier Joe Lewis, on their joint venture project with the Jamaican Government’s Harmonization Limited – the US$2 billion luxury resort village, Harmony Cove, destined for Trelawny.
He also met with a large number of Jamaicans at a town hall meeting at the J.W. Marriott Hotel, in Orlando, Florida, after attending the sixth staging of the Tavistock Cup, a popular inter-club golf competition staged annually in Orlando by the Tavistock Group.
Tavistock has consistently reiterated that the Harmony Cove resort, a very important ingredient in the government’s tourism development projections will go ahead, as planned, despite setbacks suffered from the sale of US investment house, Bear Stearns.
An official communique on the outcome of the 20th Inter-sessional Meeting of Caribbean Community Heads of Government in Belize is expected to be circulated by the Caricom Secretariat today.
Issues including the global economic and financial crisis and the effects on CARICOM and regional efforts to mitigate the crisis, were said to have dominated the Heads of Government meeting, which lasted from Thursday to Saturday.
Mr. Golding, who has lead responsibility for external trade negotiations in CARICOM, led the discussions pertaining to outstanding arrangements for the start of negotiations for a regional trade and development agreement with Canada, as well as regional exploitation of the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with Europe and plans for the Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME) by 2015.