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Caricom Secretary-General, Edwin Carrington.

Ross Sheil, Staff Reporter

If regional integration is to be judged by the interest shown by the local media in Friday's annual Caribbean Community (CARICOM) end-of-year press conference, then Jamaica may be a few steps behind.

Only The Gleaner showed up at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona, where the event was being webcast from the CARICOM Secretariat in Guyana.

But that mishap could have been caused by CARICOM not informing local media houses that the press conference was actually at 11:00 p.m. Eastern Caribbean Time and not Eastern Standard Time, as this newspaper assumed from their press release; or perhaps some other communication problem occurred.

Another teething problem

That might be put down as another teething problem as CARICOM states get used to working in unison. But then, at least Jamaica did one better than St. Lucia where the webcam showed an empty conference room.

"We wish the nation well!" joked CARICOM Secretary-General Edwin Carrington. The media "was losing out" by not covering CARICOM and that a team from the secretariat, working to sensitise regional media, would be visiting Jamaica in January, said Carrington.

He said that regional support for the CARICOM Single Market and Economy, due to come into effect by the end of 2008, was widening in the Caribbean. However, that was not the feeling he got from a conversation with someone he said was a leading figure in the Jamaican private sector.

"... one of the reasons that she gave about being lukewarm was that she said maybe the markets down there (in Trinidad) are so small," he said. But, as he pointed out, Trinidad has a larger economy than Jamaica and a population of 1.3 million, not 700,000 as she thought.

"She was shocked, so I am saying that information and education about the rest of the region is very important," he said.

- ross.sheil@gleanerjm.com

Five key areas to be addressed by CARICOM in 2007, according to Secretary-General Edwin Carrington: