ST.GEORGE’S, GRENADA, THURSDAY 21st MAY, 2009_ Outgoing chairman of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), Grenada’s Prime Minister Hon Tillman Thomas, has called for a deepening of the unity that characterized the sub region’s response to the global financial crisis. Speaking, at the opening ceremony of the 49th meeting of the OECS Authority on Wednesday in the BVI, Prime Minister Thomas said that the meeting is taking place at a time when “our resolve to act in cohesion will be needed probably as never before…our best chance to pull through these difficult times will be through our determination to go forward with our plans for greater unity.” He said despite the severity of the problems and the region’s limitations, governments have been acting in concert to manage the fallout from both the global crisis and the regional crisis which resulted from the collapse of CL Financial and the Stanford Group. “In taking these decisive steps, we were able to prevent things from spiraling out of control in our own sphere of influence, and thus laid a good foundation for recovery,” the Prime Minister told delegates. He noted the recently published IMF Regional Outlook Report, which indicates that the region is more resilient to the economic fall-out than it has been in the past and that growth is expected to rebound to around 1.5 percent by 2010. “We, as Heads of Government of the OECS countries will be looking to articulate a social development programme that will provide not only short-term safety nets, but longer-term measures to improve the social development of the people of the region,” He said. The Prime Minister said regional leaders have been “alarmed” by the position taken by the US Government and others of the G20 with respect to tax havens and it impact on the regional financial sector. However, he said several countries in the region have “already pledged that we will comply with the processes jointly developed with the OECD, and several of us are therefore already on the right track”.