A for­mer Ja­maican gov­ern­ment min­is­ter said the is­land los­es US$15 bil­lion in rev­enues from sub­si­dis­ing im­ports from the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com).Claude Clarke, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Rich­mond Val­ley, made the claim in his keynote ad­dress at the Ja­maica Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (JMA) 45th an­nu­al awards ban­quet.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­port in the Ja­maica Ob­serv­er, Clarke sug­gest­ed that Gov­ern­ment col­lect the rev­enue by sus­pend­ing Cari­com trade sub­si­dies, at least dur­ing the is­land's lend­ing arrange­ment with the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF).He al­so called on Gov­ern­ment to re­sist the urge to scrap tax con­ces­sions af­ford­ed to list­ings on the Ju­nior Stock Ex­change as it of­fered an ef­fi­cient method of rais­ing cap­i­tal for small and medi­um-sized busi­ness­es.

"Sure­ly the Gov­ern­ment could not be aware of how ir­ra­tional it is to hand­i­cap Ja­maican pro­duc­ers with tax­es and fees, while it sur­ren­ders as much as $15 bil­lion of rev­enue to our Cari­com com­peti­tors as sub­sidy to make them more com­pet­i­tive than our own pro­duc­ers in our own mar­ket," said Clarke in his ad­dress at the Ja­maica Pe­ga­sus ho­tel.

Im­ports in­to Ja­maica are great­est from the Unit­ed States, fol­lowed by Venezuela and Cari­com mem­ber state T&T. The JMA claimed ear­li­er this year that man­u­fac­tur­ers from T&T were mis­rep­re­sent­ing items as orig­i­nat­ing from with­in Cari­com–which would en­ti­tle the goods to du­ty-free sta­tus. How­ev­er a rate of du­ty or com­mon ex­ter­nal tar­iff is ap­plied on prod­ucts orig­i­nat­ing from out­side the group­ing.T&T man­u­fac­tur­ers de­nied the claim.

"It is time for the Ja­maican Gov­ern­ment to as­sert its sov­er­eign au­thor­i­ty and sus­pend the Com­mon Ex­ter­nal Tar­iff of Cari­com, at least for the du­ra­tion of the IMF pro­gramme," Clarke said.Ja­maica im­port­ed US$260.8 mil­lion worth of goods from T&T be­tween Jan­u­ary to May 2013 but the is­land's ex­ports to the twin-is­land re­pub­lic are less than three per cent of that amount, lat­est Sta­tis­ti­cal In­sti­tute of Ja­maica da­ta in­di­cates.

"Ja­maica is in a dire fis­cal sit­u­a­tion–bil­lions of dol­lars the Ja­maican peo­ple have been fore­go­ing for the ben­e­fit of Cari­com coun­tries that are eco­nom­i­cal­ly far bet­ter off than we are. Bil­lions of dol­lars di­rect­ly in­vest­ed in mov­ing jobs out of Ja­maica and out of the reach of the Ja­maican work­er," he said.

The Eco­nom­ic and So­cial Sur­vey Ja­maica 2012 in­di­cates that Ja­maica's an­nu­al trade deficit with Cari­com nar­rowed to US$775.3 mil­lion rel­a­tive to US$916.0 mil­lion in 2011. The im­prove­ment was at­trib­uted to a 22.4 per cent rise in ex­ports to US$83.2 mil­lion and a 12.7 per cent re­duc­tion in im­ports to US$858.6 mil­lion.