Remarks By The Rt. Hon. Hubert A. Ingraham, Prime Minister, Bahamas, Chairman Of CARICOM, At The Opening Ceremony Of The Nineteenth Inter-Sessional Meeting Of Conference Of Heads Of Government Of The Caribbean Community,The Bahamas, 2008

While some of us have better integrated some productive segments of our economies than others, none of us has achieved the all-important goal of linking our agricultural and marine resources sectors to the consumer sectors of our economies so as to reduce, measurably and positively, either our food import bills or the price of food. This impacts the cost of our tourism product. And, this makes the threat of the loss of preferential access to developed world markets for our exports even more serious. It is critical, therefore, that we take lessons from the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) recently concluded with the European Community so as to inform our economic and commercial relations with our other trading partners, near and far.