This was the view expressed by Prime Minister Owen Arthur as he spoke at a meeting of the Trinidad and Tobago Chamber of Industry and Commerce at the Hilton Trinidad on Friday.

Arthur was invited to address the meeting in his capacity as head of the Prime Ministerial Sub-committee for the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME) and
to inform of its status.

According to Arthur, a primary factor in growing and rampant crime was simply that Caribbean people had lost their core cultural values and identities, exchanged instead for values originating extra-regionally.

Using an example, Arthur made reference to violent crime displayed in some parts of New York being copied in the Caribbean. He, however, did not make light of
other factors.

He said that in times of chaos it was imperative that the protective agencies apply full force to guarantee the safety of the people at large.

The challenge, he outlined, was in maximising resources within budgets allotted
to defence.

He said: "One of the essential issues . . . is how best to continue to accelerate essential and rational security and defence in circumstances where you're trying to control the size of the fiscal deficit."

Placing crime in a regional context and its impact in light of the CSME, Arthur signalled that there was need to build the regional security platform.

However, he did not elaborate, indicating that Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Patrick Manning, who heads the Regional Security Sub-Committee, would be better versed on its related issues.

Addressing the large audience Arthur said: "The creation of a single Caribbean market by December 2005 will mean that CARICOM will, 16 years after the commitment at Grand Anse, find itself in the position of Europe in 1992, some 35 years after that continent agreed to create a single market in the 1957 Treaty of Rome.

"At a general level three states, namely Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, have already essentially fulfilled their obligations in respect of the five regimes that make up the single market.

"No member state has indicated an inability to meet the December 2005 deadline though these member states have requested technical assistance to enable them
to do so."

Arthur also complimented the way business was conducted in Trinidad and Tobago.

"Your business model, the willingness to innovate and to bear risks, to do new things, in new ways, for new times, can and should be held up as the way in which business should be conducted in the CSME," he said.

(Trinidad Express)