CAS­TRIES-Prime Min­is­ter Dr Ken­ny An­tho­ny says the is­sue of trade im­bal­ances among Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) coun­tries should be best ad­dressed by the Trinidad-based Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ). An­tho­ny, the in­com­ing Cari­com chair­man spoke ahead of the Ju­ly 4-6 sum­mit here amid calls by cer­tain stake­hold­ers in Ja­maica for a re­view of the is­land's re­la­tion­ship with the 15-mem­ber re­gion­al bloc.

The CCJ, es­tab­lished in 2001 to re­place the Lon­don-based Privy Coun­cil as the re­gion's fi­nal court, al­so acts as an in­ter­na­tion­al tri­bunal in­ter­pret­ing the Re­vised Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas that gov­erns Cari­com. Ja­maica's Op­po­si­tion spokesman on Trans­port and Works Car­son Hod­der has voiced con­cern over a mas­sive trade im­bal­ance be­tween Ja­maica and Trinidad and To­ba­go, but An­tho­ny said he is en­cour­aged by re­cent state­ments from his Ja­maican coun­ter­part Por­tia Simp­son-Miller re-af­firm­ing her coun­try's com­mit­ment to Cari­com.

Ja­maican man­u­fac­tur­ers have long com­plained that their coun­ter­parts in Trinidad and To­ba­go en­joy un­fair sub­si­dies and An­tho­ny said that there are sev­er­al sides to what he de­scribed as "this very com­plex and sen­si­tive is­sue." He said that Port-of-Spain has ben­e­fit­ed the most from Cari­com large­ly be­cause "it had the courage to re­struc­ture its econ­o­my, and be­cause of its en­er­gy costs.

"Trinidad is able to ex­tend re­al ben­e­fits to its man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor as a re­sult of sub­sidised en­er­gy. This a very con­tentious mat­ter and is the cause of some of the un­equal com­pe­ti­tion be­tween Trinidad and the oth­er mem­ber states. "It is an is­sue that Trinidad has to face and grap­ple with, and one which is al­so trans­lat­ed in ef­fect of air­line op­er­a­tions," he added.

He be­lieves that these are is­sues that need to be dealt with at the lev­el of the CCJ since they can­not be dealt with through pol­i­cy re­spons­es. "The truth is that the Ja­maica econ­o­my it­self needs ma­jor re­struc­tur­ing to cope with the is­sues it has at hand for when economies are in trou­ble they seek to blame oth­ers.

"So there is a larg­er pic­ture to it and as much as I un­der­stand and sym­pa­thise with Ja­maica that it has to deal with this is­sue, the fact is, over the years man­u­fac­tur­ing in Ja­maica has con­tract­ed, not on­ly be­cause of ris­ing costs, but be­cause of glob­al com­pe­ti­tion.

"On the oth­er hand there is some un­fair­ness where Trinidad is con­cerned, you know the usu­al prob­lem: when the econ­o­my is do­ing well and you be­gin to make in­vest­ments abroad you al­so at­tract crit­i­cism," An­tho­ny said, adding that "this is the prob­lem now fac­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go."

He ex­plained that the twin-is­land re­pub­lic had moved bold­ly in­to the East­ern Caribbean and Ja­maica and as a re­sult has at­tract­ed the bag­gage of crit­i­cism. But An­tho­ny ac­knowl­edged, for ex­am­ple, that Li­at, the An­tigua-based re­gion­al air­line, has to pay mar­ket prices for fu­el while the T&T na­tion­al car­ri­er, Caribbean Air­lines, ben­e­fits from sub­si­dies. Re­gion­al lead­ers open their 33rd sum­mit here to­day.