Monday, February 26 at the Marriott Hotel, opened the 29th Inter-Sessional Meeting of the CARICOM Conference of Heads of State and Government. The official ceremony was attended by Prime Minister Jack Guy Lafontant and members of his government, Presidents of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies of some parliamentarians, representatives of the Judiciary and representatives of the Diplomatic Corps.

In his speech, President Jovenel Moïse, also acting President of CARICOM, emphasized the environmental problems that the countries of the region, in particular Haiti, are facing. As President of the Conference he has taken the initiative to organize in the coming months an international conference on strengthening resilience mechanisms to the effects of climate change and the management of natural hazards in the Caribbean.

On the other hand, he emphasized the efforts of his administration to allow public institutions involved in the fight against corruption to play their role with full effectiveness.

He presented the reforms currently underway to renovate the business environment and to attract national and international investments and affirmed that his administration is in permanent dialogue with the two branches of Parliament for the vote of certain bills including the creation of the Bureau of standardization.

Moïse promised to continue the process of integration of Haiti into CARICOM, while affirming that Haiti intended to contribute to the achievement of the objectives of the Community such as the improvement of production, productivity and competitiveness at the international level.

The Head of State also took the opportunity to advocate for the adoption of French and Creole, alongside English, as the official languages of CARICOM.

On Tuesday, 27 February, the second and final day of the 29th CARICOM Conference was the venue for the signing of new agreements and resolutions to better weld the Member States.

The holding of these two days of work in Haiti allowed the Heads of Delegation to deliberate for more than 10 hours on some crucial problems facing the region : security, crime, trafficking, the free movement of people and goods, the de-risking, the Single Economy Market, transport and especially the introduction to the English side of Creole, French and Dutch in the CARICOM.

HL/ HaitiLibre