Commonwealth Secretariat deputy Secretary General visits MSG Secretariat

​The Deputy Secretary General of the Commonwealth Secretariat made his inaugural visit to the Melanesian Spearhead Group Secretariat in Port Vila last week.

His visit was to discuss with the Vanuatu Government in preparations for the next CHOGM meeting scheduled for 2017.

Deodat Maharaj and his Economic Advisor, Harshen Nyambe met the Director General of the MSG Secretariat, Peter Forau and the Deputy Director General, Molean Kilepak and Secretariat Staff on Thursday 17 September 2015.

Maharaj said his visit to Vanuatu and to the MSG Secretariat is part of his visit to Small Island States in the Pacific who are also members of the Commonwealth group of nations.

The meeting between the head of Commonwealth Secretariat and DG Forau centred on common issues of concern for the Pacific region such as the vulnerability of small island states and other key global issues.  

Maharaj conveyed to the MSG Secretariat that the Commonwealth has technical capacity that could support the programmatic work of the Secretariat mainly in the areas of policy analysis and capacity building to be further discussed by the two organizations.

In addition, he advised the MSG Secretariat to deepen its engagement both regional and internationally with Commonwealth Secretariat and other international agencies to continue in its mandates in delivering the needed socio-economic policy advise and support to its members which represent the bulk of the region, both in population and resource base.

One area that Commonwealth Secretariat has done a lot of work on is on building resilience by addressing socio-economic issues and identifying gaps to address the shocks and build more resilience for its members. Both Secretariat underscored the importance of trade as a vehicle for advancing the developmental aspirations of the MSG region and agreed to follow-up on a number of key areas of interest by way of technical assistance program to further strengthen the trade policy and trade facilitation aspect of the MSG Secretariat. 

The Director General of the MSG Secretariat thanked Maharaj and Nyambe for visiting the MSG headquarters.

He said this was the first visit from a high dignitary from the Commonwealth Secretariat in London.