SURI­NAME–The As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS), Al­bert Ramdin said new lev­els of growth in the Caribbean will de­pend large­ly on the abil­i­ty of gov­ern­ments to fac­tor changes in in­no­va­tion, tech­nol­o­gy, ed­u­ca­tion, re­search and de­vel­op­ment in­to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment agen­das. He said so dur­ing a trip that in­clud­ed vis­its to mem­ber states T&T and Suri­name.

In T&T, Ramdin signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing with Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Tim Gopeesingh, for the coun­try to host the Vir­tu­al Ed­u­ca Fo­rum in ear­ly 2014. The event will bring to­geth­er thou­sands of ed­u­ca­tors and tech­nol­o­gy ex­perts from around the world.

"This is a plat­form that has the po­ten­tial to change the way we look at ed­u­ca­tion; the way we teach, the way we learn, as well as our abil­i­ty and our chil­dren's abil­i­ty to ab­sorb in­for­ma­tion," said the se­nior OAS of­fi­cial.

Point­ing out that T&T will al­so host the Amer­i­c­as Com­pet­i­tive­ness Fo­rum next Oc­to­ber, Ramdin point­ed to the need to im­prove the re­gion's rank­ing on the Glob­al Com­pet­i­tive­ness In­dex."We must re-ex­am­ine our pri­or­i­ties and our sub­se­quent in­vest­ments in our peo­ple. We are in­ter­act­ing and com­pet­ing with coun­ter­parts from around the world, and the ques­tion we must ask our­selves is, are we on equal foot­ing to com­pete in this age of ad­vanc­ing tech­nol­o­gy?" asked the OAS Deputy, who is al­so a Caribbean na­tion­al.

While in T&T, the OAS del­e­ga­tion met with top mem­bers of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and ad­dressed the In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies.In Suri­name, the OAS As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al al­so met with gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the pri­vate sec­tor where he dis­cussed in­creased par­tic­i­pa­tion of the coun­try in hemi­spher­ic and re­gion­al busi­ness ini­tia­tives and events.