Dix­ie-Ann Dick­son

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ra­ma­rine wants to work with Ja­maica to ad­dress its on­go­ing en­er­gy is­sues, but said his views on re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion is based on "eco­nom­ic con­sid­er­a­tion." He said the dri­ver for re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion in the past was po­lit­i­cal, but the en­vi­ron­ment has changed.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian on Tues­day, Ram­nar­ine said he was sched­uled to meet with An­tho­ny Hyl­ton, Ja­maica's Min­is­ter of In­dus­try, In­vest­ment and Com­merce, at 5 pm on Tues­day at Par­lia­ment to dis­cuss re­solv­ing the en­er­gy is­sue be­tween the two coun­tries. "We would be meet­ing to see how T&T could work with Ja­maica to ad­dress its ene­gry is­sue that seems to be af­fect­ing their com­petive­ness with­in the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor." Hyl­ton, along with 12 rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Ja­maica, at­tend­ed the Caribbean In­vest­ment Fo­rum (CIF) at the Hilton Trinidad, and the Trade and In­vest­ment Con­ven­tion at the Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad, which will end on Sat­ur­day.

Ram­nar­ine said based on his un­der­stand­ing, the pre­vi­ous PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion was seek­ing to sup­ply Ja­maica with liqui­fied na­tion­al gas (LNG), but the arrange­ment fell apart. He said this Gov­er­ment is aware that T&T is the en­gine and one of Cari­com's largest economies and recog­nised the role it has to play in sup­ply­ing the re­gion with en­er­gy. "The Gov­ern­ment has re­con­firmed its com­mit­ment to Cari­com, as we are al­ready sup­ply­ing liq­uid fu­el to some re­gion­al coun­tries."

Search­ing for com­mon ground

In an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view on Mon­day at the open­ing of CIF, Hyl­ton said while he recog­nised "the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship has dis­tigu­ished it­self to re­gion­al­ism and his Ja­maica par­ty (the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Par­ty) has nev­er veered away from in­te­gra­tion, we yet to have a com­mon con­cep­tion of how this in­te­gra­tion process would op­er­ate." "En­er­gy is viewed in T&T by the wider pop­u­la­tion as 'we gas'-and the truth is that we can­not have an in­te­gra­tion move­ment that looks at ra­tio­nal­is­ing our pro­duc­tive ca­pa­bil­i­ties and then fo­cus on the world." He said Ja­maica had wit­nessed an at­ti­tude where­by the coun­try should not be get­ting gas be­cause of its lack of com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tage.

"When we look at the sin­gle mar­ket arrange­ment, Ja­maica has the largest mar­ket and it re­mains open to T&T's prod­ucts. To date, notwith­stand­ing the chal­lenges we've had, we are still open." Hyl­ton said un­der the Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas, T&T has the right to ac­cess the Ja­maica's mar­kets and "we should have a rec­i­p­ro­cal right of ac­cess to en­er­gy on a non-dis­crim­i­na­to­ry ba­sis and that has been a ma­jor prob­lem. "We can­not spend ten to 15 years talk­ing about it. We need to solve it and move on." Hyl­ton said he be­lieved the mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing (MoU) dis­cussed with the for­mer ad­min­stra­tion would have solved the is­sue. Asked to out­line the de­tails of the MoU, he said, "In broad terms, it was a MoU that com­mit­ted a lim­it­ed vol­ume of en­er­gy. Ja­maica re­quires about three mil­lion tonnes, but we de­cide to have 1.1 mil­lion tonnes of en­er­gy. We can ac­cess it glob­al­ly, but we are say­ing that T&T has an en­er­gy sup­ply arrange­ment with the rest of the world, so how come it can­not com­mit mean­ing­ful­ly to Cari­com? "The sin­gle mar­ket was nev­er about T&T and Ja­maica, but how we could come to­geth­er as a re­gion and face the rest of the world."

Trade im­bal­ance

The in­abil­i­ty to ex­pe­ri­ence free move­ment of its cit­i­zens to oth­er Cari­com coun­tries is an­oth­er ma­jor is­sue for Ja­maica, Hyl­ton said.

"Ja­maicans are rou­tine­ly turned away from the bor­ders, us­ing Jami­a­ca's artistes as an ex­am­ple. We can't have a Cari­com in­te­gra­tion move­ment, if our peo­ple can't move." Ja­maica has been at a dis­ad­van­tage re­gard­ing the trade im­bal­ance with T&T and its Cari­com neigh­bours. Ja­maica's trade defict with T&T in 2010 stood at US$702 mil­lion. This fig­ure in­creased from US $616 mil­lion in 2009.

Writ­ing in the Ja­maica Ob­serv­er, Claude Clarke stat­ed Ja­maica ex­pe­ri­enced a trade deficit with Cari­com of al­most US$1.2 bil­lion and ex­ports are bare­ly US$60 mil­lion. Thir­ty years ago, Ja­maica was a ma­jor ex­porter to Cari­com. The ar­ti­cle stat­ed that in 1982, Ja­maica's ex­ports to Cari­com paid for eight per cent of all its im­ports, but to­day it bare­ly cov­ers less than one per cent. How­ev­er, Hyl­ton said he recog­nised the at­tempt by the T&T Gov­ern­ment to ad­dress the long out­stand­ing trade im­bal­ance, re­fer­ring to his T&T coun­ter­part Stephen Cadiz lead­ing a 30-mem­ber trade del­e­ga­tion to Ja­maica from April 26 to 29.

A glob­al trans­ship­ment hub

Hyl­ton is very op­ti­mistic about Ja­maica's abil­i­ty to kick­start its econ­o­my.

Asked what Ja­maica is do­ing to bol­ster its econ­o­my, he said many things are in place:

• Im­prov­ing the sec­tor com­petive­ness to com­pete gloablly.

• Re­vis­ing poli­cies in­clud­ing the trade pol­i­cy which are af­fect­ing not on­ly the trade, but the man­u­fac­tur­ing in­dus­try.

• To ad­dress the ease of do­ing busi­ness.

Dur­ing Mon­day's high lev­el min­is­te­r­i­al dis­cus­sion on the suc­cess­ful use of trade agree­ments at CIF, Hyl­ton said Ja­maica wants to po­si­tion it­self as a glob­al tran­ship­ment hub to serve the Caribbean and the world. He said this move was crit­i­cal be­cause the re­gion must be pre­pared to take ad­van­tage of an ex­pand­ed Pana­ma Canal.

He out­lined Ja­maica's ad­van­tages of the Kingston port:

• It's the 37th most con­nect­ed con­tain­er port in the word

• The 16th most cen­tral­ly lo­cat­ed con­tain­er port in the world

• It's the fourth most con­nect­ed port in 180 coun­tries

He boast­ed of Ja­maica at­tract­ing in­creas­ing for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment.

"Our FDI has in­creased be­tween the years 2000-2010. It was US$682.5 mil­lion per an­num over that pe­ri­od."

At the end of 2010, he said, it was $10.9 bil­lion, an in­crease of US$227.7 mil­lion when com­pared to 2009.

"In 2008, we at­tract­ed US$1.4 bil­lion in FDI flows."