Latest update December 12th, 2024 1:00 AM
Carrington says Greenidge’s future depends on resources
The future employment of Mr Carl Greenidge as a lead trade negotiator for the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) hangs in the balance after the government denounced him for recent negative comments about Guyana.
Greenidge, who served seven years as Finance Minister under the People’s National Congress Government, is the Senior Deputy Director of the Office of Trade Negotiations (OTN) of CARICOM. His contract ends at the end of this month, but there is no clear indication that he would be re-hired.
Carl Greenidge
“As of now, Mr Greenidge is a member of the OTN, and as far as I know, he has a contract which takes him up to the end of this year,” said outgoing CARICOM Secretary General, Sir Edwin Carrington. “What happens beyond that depends on if there are resources.”
The Office of Trade Negotiations of the CARICOM Secretariat was formerly called the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery. It now has extended responsibility for the coordination, development, and execution of negotiating strategies for all Community external trade negotiations.
What has angered the government is a statement by Greenidge that the country is a nightmare and needs visionary leadership to lift itself from that position.
Greenidge has expressed an interest in being nominated as the Presidential Candidate for the People’s National Congress Reform at the next general elections, which are due within a year.
On Thursday, it was announced that the government had decided to notify the CARICOM Secretariat that it had lost confidence in Greenidge’s ability to represent the interests of Guyana and the government and the Community.
But even before that announcement Miniser Manzoor Nadir, performing the duties of Foreign Minister, wrote a letter to the CARICOM Secretariat informing it that the government no longer had confidence in Greenidge.
Greenidge has an impressive academic track record in the field of economics, and also taught at the University of Guyana.
When the PNC lost power in 1992, he took up several leading positions, including that of Deputy Secretary General of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Secretariat in Brussels.
He also served as Secretary General of the ACP Group in Brussels and Director of the joint ACP-EU specialist institution on information communication technology in Wageningen, The Netherlands.
He has been associated with Lomé and Cotonou negotiations since 1982 and was heading the ACP Group when both the first Banana Panel sat and the first Lomé waiver was obtained.
As Co-President of the Joint ACP-EU Council he launched the Lomé IV negotiations.
According to the OTN, as Minister of Finance he headed the Guyana teams which negotiated the many agreements, such as Paris Club and the first ever programme for the clearance of arrears to the Multilateral Institutions under the so-called ‘Intensified Collaborative Approach’ for chronically indebted countries and buy-back of commercial debt, on which successful management of Guyana’s ERP and HIPC eligibility were based.
The OTN says his professional interests are extensive and he has published on a variety of issues ranging from privatization to the management of a common property resource and the political economy of agricultural modernisation.
Greenidge has also served on a variety of international bodies including the European Forum on International Cooperation (EUFORIC), the European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECDPM) and the 5th UN Expert Group on Financial Issues of Agenda 21, which spawned the ‘Nairobi Initiative on Capacity Building for Financing Sustainable Development’.
He was Vice Chairman of each of these bodies and is a former member of the Advisory Boards of the University of Oxford’s Regulatory Policy Research Institute (RPRI) and Regulatory Policy Centre (RPC). Most recently he has been a Coordinating Lead Author of the International Agricultural Assessment of Science and Technology (IAASTD) with responsibility for East, South Asia and the Pacific Regions.
Similar Articles
THE BLUNT OF THE DAY
Sports
Features/Columnists
Raises and Recognition
Peeping Tom… Kaieteur News- In the movie, Saturday Night Fever, Tony Manero‘s boss offers him a raise after he... more
High-Stakes Bid for OAS Secretary General post
By Sir Ronald Sanders Kaieteur News- The election of a new Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS),... more
Weekend Cartoon
