The Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) and In­dia have re­newed their com­mit­ment to bi­lat­er­al co­op­er­a­tion, ac­cord­ing to a state­ment is­sued Tues­day by the Guyana-based CARI­COM Sec­re­tari­at.

It said that the com­mit­ment was made at the sec­ond meet­ing of the CARI­COM-In­dia Joint Com­mis­sion which met vir­tu­al­ly last Wednes­day.

The state­ment said that the Joint Com­mis­sion re­viewed the en­tire spec­trum of re­la­tions be­tween In­dia and CARI­COM, in­clud­ing eco­nom­ic and com­mer­cial, agri­cul­ture, health and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, en­er­gy and in­fra­struc­ture, tech­nol­o­gy and in­no­va­tion, hu­man re­source and ca­pac­i­ty build­ing, cul­ture and peo­ple-to-peo­ple ex­change.

”Both sides de­lib­er­at­ed on strength­en­ing eco­nom­ic co­op­er­a­tion, en­hanc­ing trade and fos­ter­ing a ro­bust part­ner­ship in the ar­eas of ed­u­ca­tion, dig­i­tal pub­lic in­fra­struc­ture, de­vel­op­ment co­op­er­a­tion, re­new­able en­er­gy, sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy, cli­mate change adap­ta­tion, dis­as­ter man­age­ment and re­silient in­fra­struc­ture,” it added.

The Joint Com­mis­sion was co-chaired by the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of For­eign of Af­fairs of Do­mini­ca, Bar­bara Bai­ley, who in her re­marks not­ed that In­dia has been a long-stand­ing friend of the Com­mu­ni­ty hav­ing es­tab­lished diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions with mem­ber coun­tries as far as 1962.

She ex­pressed ap­pre­ci­a­tion for In­dia’s sup­port for the con­ven­ing of Joint Com­mis­sion, which met pre­vi­ous­ly in 2015, not­ing that the dis­cus­sion sig­nalled the com­mit­ment that both CARI­COM and In­dia at­tach to their im­por­tant re­la­tion­ship.

In­dia’s Vice Min­is­ter with­in the Min­istry of Ex­ter­nal Af­fairs, Jaideep Mazum­dar, al­so un­der­scored the sig­nif­i­cance of the meet­ing in ad­vanc­ing prepa­ra­tions for up­com­ing en­gage­ments, which he said will add mo­men­tum to CARI­COM-In­dia re­la­tions.

The CARI­COM state­ment said that the meet­ing of the CARI­COM-In­dia Joint Com­mis­sion comes on the heels of an In­dia-CARI­COM For­eign Min­is­te­r­i­al Meet­ing held on 27 Sep­tem­ber this year New York.

GEORGE­TOWN, Guyana, Nov 12, CMC

CMC/ht/ir/2024