T&T is two years be­hind on its com­mit­ment to re­move tar­iffs on Eu­ro­pean goods and ser­vices, the head of the Del­e­ga­tion of the Eu­ro­pean Union (EU) to T&T Daniela Tra­macere has said. Un­der the Eco­nom­ic Part­ner­ship Agree­ment (EPA) that Eu­rope signed with 15 Caribbean coun­tries in 2008, T&T was sup­posed to re­move tar­iffs on goods and ser­vices com­ing from 27 EU coun­tries by Jan­u­ary 2011. CAR­I­FO­RUM is made up of the 14 coun­tries of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) plus the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic.

"In­deed, the tar­iff lib­er­al­i­sa­tions fore­seen in the EPA are asym­met­ric, mean­ing that the EU has al­ready cut its tar­iffs on al­most all prod­ucts im­port­ed from CAR­I­FO­RUM and the Caribbean coun­tries are cut­ting their tar­iffs grad­u­al­ly over a pe­ri­od of up to 25 years (from sig­na­ture of the agree­ment in 2008). The cuts are done by prod­ucts and (on) a sched­ule which was agreed (to) by both par­ties, and is part of the An­nex­es to the EPA," said Port of Spain-based EU At­tach� Kathrin Ren­ner to the Busi­ness Guardian by e-mail on Feb­ru­ary 21. She was re­spond­ing to a fol­low up ques­tion af­ter an in­ter­view with Tra­macere and her­self at the EU del­e­ga­tion's of­fice at Queen's Park West on Jan­u­ary 30.

"Now, we see, if you look at the progress of the EPA, that the re­gion is mov­ing in the right di­rec­tion, al­so in terms of lib­er­al­i­sa­tion," Tra­macere, the EU del­e­ga­tion's Charge d'Af­faires said. "This is one of the is­sues that we al­ways bring up. Many of the CAR­I­FO­RUM coun­tries have not yet im­ple­ment­ed the low­er­ing of tar­iffs as they com­mit­ted to. True, but some move­ment is tak­ing place and the ar­row is point­ing in the right di­rec­tion. This coun­try, I'm sure, is al­so on the right track."

She said the EU del­e­ga­tion is ful­ly aware of the is­sues. "This coun­try has not im­ple­ment­ed yet the cut in the tar­iffs as com­mit­ted in the agree­ment, which were due by the be­gin­ning of 2011," she said. "It's two years late. So we have been talk­ing about this in dif­fer­ent fo­ra. We are per­fect­ly aware of the sen­si­tiv­i­ties in T&T about par­tic­u­lar sec­tors, but al­so we are con­fi­dent that you (T&T) will be tak­ing the nec­es­sary mea­sures and pro­vi­sions that you con­sid­er more op­por­tune. So over­all I think that the move­ment is pos­i­tive and en­cour­ag­ing."

T&T trade with the EU has been steadi­ly grow­ing since 2006, and out of the �28.3 mil­lion al­lo­cat­ed by the EU to help Caribbean busi­ness­es use the EPA through the Caribbean Ex­port De­vel­op­ment Agency (CE­DA), at least 11 com­pa­nies from T&T have re­ceived Di­rect As­sis­tance Grants (DAGs) with­in the past two years. Se­nior Grant Ad­vi­sor Kirk Brown of the Bar­ba­dos-based CE­DA said in an e-mail that over the past two years �326,588.93 ($2.841 mil­lion) was dis­bursed to T&T com­pa­nies as DAGs. The com­pa­nies were:

SMAKS, The West In­dies Tea Com­pa­ny

Chem Clean Ltd

K.C. Con­fec­tionery Ltd

Ms. Brafit Ltd

Trinidad Ho­tels, Restau­rants and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion

Sacha Cos­met­ics Lim­it­ed

Fresh Start Ltd

Ma­tu­ri­ty Mu­sic Ltd

Nat­ur­al Oils & Prod­ucts Lim­it­ed

ACLA Works Lim­it­ed

Pan­land Trinidad &To­ba­go Ltd

T&T en­joys a trade sur­plus with Eu­rope for trade in goods. In ser­vices it has a deficit. In goods, for the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary to Sep­tem­ber 2012, Eu­rope's trade deficit with T&T was �744 mil­lion, an im­prove­ment for the Eu­ro­peans when com­pared to the �1.293 bil­lion deficit with T&T dur­ing the same pe­ri­od in 2011. In ser­vices, avail­able da­ta for 2011 showed that Eu­rope has a sur­plus of �124 mil­lion with T&T.

Tra­macere said she un­der­stands "there is a bill which pos­si­bly is go­ing to be tabled very soon," to ad­dress the asym­me­try in tar­iff lib­er­al­i­sa­tion. She said it was laid in Par­lia­ment in May 2012 but there were some hic­cups and it was put off. Ren­ner said it was not passed by the up­per and low­er hous­es with­in one par­lia­men­tary term, so it now has to be re-in­tro­duced.

Tra­macere said the EPA has a strong de­vel­op­men­tal ob­jec­tive for Caribbean. She said it is in Eu­rope's in­ter­est that the Caribbean pros­pers. She said: "We trea­sure this agree­ment, and I'm sure that our part­ners do so as well. We are talk­ing about small economies here. We are talk­ing about an is­land, like T&T, which is very rich, thanks al­so to your nat­ur­al re­sources, but we are talk­ing about al­so oth­er is­lands that are not so rich. The lev­el of di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of your econ­o­my is still lim­it­ed. You are aim­ing at di­ver­si­fy­ing even fur­ther, so we un­der­stand your con­cerns. Now, to un­der­stand your con­cerns doesn't mean we are ap­pre­cia­tive of any lax­ism - wher­ev­er it is, even in Eu­rope - con­cern­ing keep­ing one's com­mit­ment."