In his opening address to the Meeting, Minister Mitchell said the following:

I am pleased to sit in this Chair and honoured on behalf of The Bahamas. I bring you fraternal and sisterly greetings from The Bahamas and its Prime Minister Perry Christie and our entire delegation joining me today and headed by High Commissioner Picewell Forbes.

I hope that The Bahamas will prove to serve this organization well. Caricom is key part of our foreign policy. On the way here I was asked the question that is heard too often around the region: what do you think will happen to Caricom?

Being a minimalist, I gave an answer that I always give: if it didn’t exist we would have to invent it; not to expect more than can be delivered; not to put more on it than it can bear. There is an intrinsic value in the conversation alone.

To be sure one can list the issues, financial being amongst the most vexing. But the story of Joseph interpreting the dream of Pharaoh can best explain that life is cyclical and we have good years and lean years. Things will turn around.

It is he who endures to the end.

The conversation on the political economy can find no better forum for the Caribbean than Caricom meetings. I look forward to welcoming you to Nassau. It is the hope of our Prime Minister that we will have a detailed discussion on the issue of human development and in particular addressing the question of youth unemployment; their sense of despair and hopelessness. In his statement most recently in China at the CELAC meeting he opined that if we do not address this issue, we do so at the peril of all of our societies. The Bahamas believes that culture and sports point the way to the future.

I also asked the SG if we can include in our wide conversation at this meeting at for the Heads agenda a discussion or some kind of statement in support of Nigeria and the devastation wrought by the terror group Boko Haram.

Reading the press around the region, many of our citizens were concerned that there was a double standard operation where we seemed to express outrage at the deaths in Paris, but not the horror in northern Nigeria.

Caricom can make its voice heard, push above its weight around the globe.

I also look forward to some kind of assessment on the shifting prices of commodities including petroleum and how it is affecting our nation states and what recommendations we can make to our heads.
I therefore look forward to today’s meeting. I thank you all for finding the time to attend.

I welcome you again. I thank the Government of Guyana and the Secretary General’s office for the excellent arrangements they have made for this meeting.

Thank you and have a good meeting.