Prime Minister Gaston Browne has called for the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States to pursue a far more proactive strategy toward Latin America, arguing that the sub-region’s commercial ties with its 447 million Spanish-speaking neighbours remain frustratingly thin given their proximity and scale.

Browne made the appeal during his address as incoming chairman of the OECS Authority at the 78th meeting of the Authority, held at the Royalton Resort on Sunday.

He told fellow heads of government that the OECS, with its population of approximately 625,000, sits within a CARICOM of roughly 17 million people, but that the wider hemisphere to the south and west holds a market 40 times the size of CARICOM with which trade remains underdeveloped.

“We must develop a far more proactive strategy toward our Latin American neighbourhood,” Browne told delegates, adding that this should include greater fluency in Spanish among OECS nationals and officials.

The prime minister singled out Panama for particular attention, citing the Panama Canal’s more than US$33 billion in annual trade volume and the Colón Free Trade Zone as critical infrastructure the OECS could leverage.

He proposed that the sub-region use Panama as a transshipment point while building sourcing partnerships with Central American producers, an approach he said could fundamentally reduce the cost of living and strengthen regional resilience.

“An OECS strategy that builds sourcing partnerships with Central American producers, uses Panama as a transshipment point, and develops shared regional emergency stockpiles could fundamentally reduce our cost of living and transform our resilience,” Browne said.

The Prime Minister argued that reducing the OECS’s overdependence on a single dominant input market was essential, and that Panama offered the natural gateway for alternative sourcing across Central America, South America and the Asia-Pacific region.

He noted that the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean has consistently recommended that Caribbean nations build trade partnerships with Latin American counterparts to take advantage of regional value chains that increasingly dominate production.

The push toward Latin America formed one part of a broader address in which Browne outlined his priorities for the year ahead, including a proposal for a jointly owned OECS airline funded through unclaimed deposits at the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank, equity participation in regional geothermal energy projects, and a directive for the OECS Commission to develop a blue economy investment portfolio within six months.

Antigua assumes the OECS Authority chairmanship from St. Vincent and the Grenadines’ Prime Minister, Dr. Godwin Friday, for a one-year term, as the organization marked 45 years since the signing of the original Treaty of Basseterre on June 18, 1981.