Bridgetown.
There is a promise from Barbados and Chile to explore other avenues to enhance cooperation as the impetus to cementing a long-lasting relationship at the socio-economic level.
Director General of the Chilean Agency for International Development (AGCI), Ambassador Jorge Daccarett, gave this undertaking earlier this week during a courtesy call on Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, Senator Maxine McClean.
He was accompanied by the AGCI's Country Manager South-South Cooperation, Leonardo Velásquez and Chile's Honorary Counsul, David Harding.
During the meeting at the Ministry's Culloden Road headquarters, the envoy said the working visit to CARICOM, was intended to build a platform for triangular cooperation.
The Ambassador also alluded to the creation of a grouping within The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States to facilitate more south-south cooperation.
Mr. Daccarett added: "There are several programmes that we [Chile] are doing and I think that we can take advantage of the synergies to work together and create better programmes with more muscle and this is what I want to propose to CARICOM that we work together under this umbrella."
He also mentioned the teaching of Spanish as an area that was being enhanced in collaboration with Mexico to instruct diplomats in Spanish, the provision of scholarships, disaster training and tackling food security, as areas to further strengthen the relationship.
In turn, Senator McClean said: "With the concerns about food security in Barbados and the region, agriculture is taking on greater importance given all that is happening and, of course, this is an area that we would want to work more closely."
She suggested that future agricultural-based programmes must include Haiti given its two-thirds membership in CARICOM. "As a region we have committed [to this]…but I do not know that we have been able to deliver in a way that we could… and that is an area in which we can cooperate," Senator McClean underlined.
