The AGM was to have been held at the Ocean Terrace Inn (OTI) as well as the 99^th Board of Directors Meeting. President of the CAIC, Carol Evelyn, told this publication that the latter of the two meetings was held but a decision was taken to forego the AGM because the organization is still in the process of implementing its “business plan”. He said it was felt that to change leadership during in mid-implementation would be unfair to the incoming board members.

“We did not have the AGM because there is a business plan which we started implementing a year ago. We have not implemented all of that at this point in time and so therefore, the executive felt that there were come critical areas which still needed to be implemented and it would have been – for want of a better term – a little unfair to a new president, for us to turn it over to them. It was felt that it would have been better if the present executive, under my leadership, who started the implementation, would have really completed the work and then have a new executive body.”

The business plan, according to President Evelyn, includes partnering more with CARICOM and also creating and cementing a new vision for the Chamber of Industry and Commerce (CIC).

“The business plan entails a new direction as far as what CIC does. CIC should be looking more to be working alongside CARICOM to implement all of the trading agreements, because we felt as though the CSME is not moving anywhere. The heads are not showing much interest in implementing alot of the decisions which they have taken. So we felt as though we should be looking towards how we can do this at the same time create more of an enabling environment for our members in an effort to create more business ideas for them to grow; not just in their own local market, not just regional markets, but also international markets. So we felt as thought we wanted to put in place a vision for our members to expand and look beyond their transitional market.”

Mr. Evelyn has made a commitment that the 56^th AGM will be held by October, 2011, by which time the business plan would have been implemented. He said that meeting will coincide with the organisation’s 100^th Board of Directors Meeting, for which special plans might be in the making.

“That AGM will be our 56^th AGM but or 100^th Board Meeting because we keep them twice per year while we keep the AGM once per year. We were thinking that wherever that 1^st board meeting was held, that we would go back to that same meeting place and hold our 100^th board meeting with something special like a banquet with founding members being invited and honoured. The first meeting was held in Barbados.”