Cuba Ratifies Agreement Establishing the Caribbean Customs Organization

HAVANA, Cuba, Jan 4 (ACN) The Council of State of the Republic of Cuba contributed to the emergence of the Caribbean Customs Organization (CCO), by being the first country to ratify its constituent convention.

The agreement has been revalidated and the official communication was delivered to the Permanent Secretary of the Conference of the Caribbean Customs Law Enforcement Council (CCALA), informed Cuban journalists Miguel Núñez Martín, Advisor to the General Customs of the Republic (AGR).
He announced that the fact that if 14 countries subscribe to it, it is expected that the (ACO) can be constituted in the first months of 2020, after the Permanent Secretariat receives the certification of the first 10 to do so, according to the bases of the document.
The Conference of the Caribbean Customs Law Enforcement Council met last May at the Hotel Nacional, attended by delegations of 26 members:
The Netherlands, Aruba, Curaçao, St. Martin, Great Britain, Spain, Dominican Republic, Dominica, Nicaragua, Bermuda ,Antigua and Barbuda, Jamaica, France, Cayman Islands, Turks and Caicos, Haiti, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Monserrat ,British Virgin Islands, Anguilla, Canada , Belize , Bahamas, Trinidad and Tobago and Cuba.
This is the largest attendance in the last four years at a meeting of this type, which contributes to the strengthening of the organization and expresses recognition of Cuba and its capacity to convene, added the AGR expert.
Representatives from Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Dominican Republic, Haiti and the Kingdom of the Netherlands, through their ministers from the Netherlands, Aruba, Curaçao and St. Martin, also signed off on the text.
In a special address, Colonel Nelson Cordovés Reyes, Chief of the General Customs of the Republic, said at the event that the consolidation of a consensus of unity in action, regardless of positions that differ in certain aspects, will allow for success in the complex challenges of integration in the Greater Caribbean.
He expressed the certainty that there will be other signatories as the legal evaluation process in each nation is concluded and that the creation of the new organization will be announced shortly after its ratification.
According to the Permanent Secretariat of CCALA, with headquarters in Saint Lucia, the Netherlands, Aruba, Curaçao, Saint Martin, and Antigua are working on concluding the approval-ratification process for this month of January.
British Overseas Territories hope that the same will be done in Britain.
On that basis, it is expected that the new organization will begin operating as such by March or April, when 10 countries ratify the convention, the AGR advisor said.
With a territorial extension of 616 square kilometers and more than 180,000 inhabitants, St. Lucia is a small island state, located in the Caribbean Sea, north of St. Vincent and the Grenadines and south of the island of Martinique.
The Permanent Secretariat of the Caribbean Customs Organization (CCO) must also be based in Castries, its capital.