Nadaleen Singh

There is po­lit­i­cal will in Cana­da to have trade talks with T&T on a bi­lat­er­al free trade agree­ment, even though ne­go­ti­a­tions have stalled on the re­place­ment for the Carib­Can agree­ment, which was be­tween Cari­com and Cana­da. Ger­ard Lat­ulippe, Cana­da's High Com­mis­sion­er to T&T, said if the ne­go­ti­a­tions for the Carib­Can agree­ment do not bear fruit, there is al­ways room for an agree­ment with T&T alone.

In late Sep­tem­ber 2014, Trade Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath had sig­nalled at an in­vest­ment con­fer­ence in New York, that there could be a de­par­ture from cer­tain Cari­com arrange­ments, if stay­ing in those arrange­ments does not seek T&T's in­ter­est. At that con­fer­ence, Bharath al­so in­di­cat­ed there was dif­fi­cul­ty for T&T's Cari­com coun­ter­parts to have bi­lat­er­al agree­ments. Bharath stat­ed then that T&T, Bar­ba­dos and Guyana had an agree­ment while the oth­er Cari­com mem­ber states were not in agree­ment.

In 2011, the agree­ment ex­pired but an ex­ten­sion was grant­ed to 2013. The ex­pi­ra­tion of the agree­ment means that du­ty free ac­cess to Cana­da's mar­ket and vice ver­sa would not take place.

Ac­cord­ing to the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion, the Carib­Can agree­ment was re­turned to the World Trade Or­gan­i­sa­tion to get an ex­ten­sion of the (2011 to 2013) waiv­er. Busi­ness­es in T&T are hope­ful the ex­ten­sion would be grant­ed to 2022. In the mean­time, ex­ports to Cana­da are du­ty-free.

In April 2013, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on a four-day vis­it to Cana­da, said T&T is com­mit­ted to hav­ing a free trade agree­ment with that coun­try.

Speak­ing to Busi­ness Guardian on Mon­day, Lat­ulippe said the ne­go­ti­a­tions had stalled be­cause some Caribbean coun­tries had stronger economies than oth­ers.

He added that T&T has al­ways tak­en a lead­er­ship ap­proach to ne­go­ti­at­ing the Carib­Can agree­ment.

"Cana­da has been work­ing to hav­ing a FTA since 2007. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, it did not pro­duce the re­sult we ex­pect­ed. There was a prob­lem with the ne­go­ti­a­tions–as even Min­is­ter Bharath said on var­i­ous oc­ca­sions–with­in Cari­com it­self you have small coun­tries/big­ger coun­tries. T&T has al­ways been a leader in try­ing to have this agree­ment brought to a suc­cess­ful end. That is not the case at this point."

De­spite the state­ments in 2014, about hav­ing a bi­lat­er­al FTA with Cana­da, Lat­ulippe said no talks had been start­ed. Re­gard­ing oth­er as­pects of trade be­tween the two ter­ri­to­ries, he added that some sec­tors have been tar­get­ted such as oil and gas, bank­ing, down­stream sec­tors and se­cu­ri­ty sec­tors.

He added that Cana­da's re­gion­al pro­gramme is sup­port­ive of Caribbean Court of Jus­tice and its strength­en­ing. Re­gard­ing oth­er as­pects of T&T's jus­tice sys­tem, Lat­ulippe said the Cana­di­an High Com­mis­sion is work­ing with Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie and oth­er as­pects of law en­force­ment to sup­port Crim­i­nal Jus­tice Re­form.

Lat­ulippe took up of­fice in Jan­u­ary 2013. High­light­ing one of his ac­com­plish­ments, he said: "I brought about small projects with NGOs in T&T. At one point there were no projects be­cause T&T was not ad­miss­able (due to be­ing an oil-based econ­o­my). Now, every year, we have at least four or five or six small projects for NGOs con­cern­ing sup­port for women who are in sit­u­a­tions of so­cial prob­lems."

Asked whether de­clin­ing oil prices af­fect­ed Cana­da's econ­o­my: "This is not on­ly a prob­lem in T&T. In Cana­da, we see the val­ue of our dol­lar be­ing re­duced. Here our com­pa­nies are still ac­tive, we have down­stream in­dus­tries that were fac­ing prob­lems not nec­es­sar­i­ly as a re­sult of oil prices, but be­cause the short­age of gas which is a tem­po­rary sit­u­a­tion as I un­der­stand, com­pa­nies like Methanex and PCS Ni­tro­gen.

"I am very op­ti­mistic T&T is the strongest econ­o­my in the Caribbean and I am op­ti­mistic for the fu­ture of this coun­try."