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Basseterre, St.Kitts (September 4th 2015):- Antigua and Barbuda is among Caribbean countries represented at an International Monetary Fund (IMF) high-level conference taking place in St Kitts. Both Prime Minister, Gaston Browne and Minister of State in the Ministry of Finance, Senator Lennox Weston, are attending the two-day gathering of senior officials from the region. The meeting is the 2015 High Level Caribbean Forum organised by the IMF aimed at enhancing policy dialogue between the Fund and Caribbean authorities. The central aim of the gathering is to arrive at practical solutions to the key economic problems facing the Caribbean.

An informed source says this year’s forum will concentrate on three main areas; reducing energy costs, financing infrastructure, and banking sector issues. The meeting ends later today.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Browne is to attend two important gatherings in Jamaica organised by the Venezuelan Government. PM Browne and his Caribbean colleagues, now in St Kitts attending an IMF-sponsored conference, will board a Venezuelan Government aircraft for the journey to Jamaica. They will first attend celebrations in Montego Bay marking the 10th anniversary of the PetroCaribe Agreement. This is the agreement through which Venezuela sells petroleum products to the Caribbean under special conditions.

From Montego Bay, the Caribbean leaders will journey to Kingston, the Jamaican capital, to attend activities marking the 200th anniversary Simon Bolivar’s ‘Letter from Jamaica’. That document, written on September 6, 1815, is a 14-page political treaties by the man considered as the father of the independence movement in Latin America. The British, who were the colonial masters of Jamaica at the times, had offered shelter and support to Bolivar in their quest to weaken Spanish interests in the Caribbean.