An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers

@guardian.co.tt

Fazir Khan, pres­i­dent of the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil for the Con­struc­tion In­dus­try (JCC), has strong­ly re­ject­ed any sug­ges­tion that T&T could af­ford to dis­count or jeop­ar­dise its re­la­tion­ship with Cari­com, warn­ing that such a stance would un­der­mine the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic re­silience. Khan told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that the ev­i­dence is un­equiv­o­cal that Cari­com is not mere­ly an im­por­tant trad­ing part­ner, but an in­dis­pens­able one, par­tic­u­lar­ly for the non-en­er­gy and con­struc­tion sec­tors, as the coun­try seeks to di­ver­si­fy away from hy­dro­car­bons. Of­fi­cial trade sta­tis­tics show that Cari­com is Trinidad and To­ba­go’s sec­ond-largest ex­port mar­ket, ac­count­ing for rough­ly ten per cent of to­tal glob­al ex­ports and an even larg­er pro­por­tion of non-en­er­gy ex­ports.

When pe­tro­le­um and pe­tro­le­um prod­ucts are ex­clud­ed, ex­ports to Cari­com have been es­ti­mat­ed at more than US$560 mil­lion in a re­cent bench­mark year. This rep­re­sents ap­prox­i­mate­ly 25 per cent of all in­tra-re­gion­al ex­ports, by far the largest share held by any Cari­com mem­ber state.

Khan said this pro­file re­flects a vi­tal an­chor for di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion rather than a mar­gin­al or un­re­li­able mar­ket.

He not­ed that the Gov­ern­ment’s own trade pol­i­cy iden­ti­fies in­tra-re­gion­al trade as a key plat­form for ex­pand­ing high­er-val­ue man­u­fac­tured ex­ports and ser­vices. These in­clude elec­tron­ic as­sem­bly, build­ing ma­te­ri­als, pack­ag­ing and oth­er out­puts close­ly linked to con­struc­tion ac­tiv­i­ty.

T&T is among the few Cari­com states al­ready ex­port­ing these ser­vices, cre­at­ing em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties for tech­ni­cians, en­gi­neers, con­trac­tors and pro­fes­sion­al con­sul­tants who might oth­er­wise be con­strained by fluc­tu­a­tions in the do­mes­tic mar­ket.

Khan said this re­gion­al de­mand has be­come an in­creas­ing­ly im­por­tant out­let for the lo­cal con­struc­tion in­dus­try.

The Cari­com Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my (CSME) frame­work fur­ther strength­ens these op­por­tu­ni­ties by fa­cil­i­tat­ing, in prin­ci­ple, the free move­ment of goods, ser­vices, skills and cap­i­tal with­in a sin­gle eco­nom­ic space.

Cari­com lead­ers have re­peat­ed­ly ac­knowl­edged that T&T cur­rent­ly holds the largest share of goods trade with­in the Sin­gle Mar­ket, po­si­tion­ing lo­cal firms to scale up pro­duc­tion, in­vest across bor­ders and use the re­gion as a launch pad in­to ex­tra-re­gion­al mar­kets.

Khan warned that nar­ra­tives ques­tion­ing the val­ue of Cari­com ig­nore the tan­gi­ble com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tages T&T en­joys with­in the Com­mu­ni­ty, in­clud­ing tar­iff-free ac­cess, reg­u­la­to­ry fa­mil­iar­i­ty, ge­o­graph­ic prox­im­i­ty and cul­tur­al affin­i­ty.

He added that mod­el­ling ex­er­cis­es have cau­tioned that dis­rup­tions to Cari­com mar­ket ac­cess could re­sult in hun­dreds of mil­lions of US dol­lars in po­ten­tial an­nu­al ex­port loss­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly in non-en­er­gy sec­tors still try­ing to es­tab­lish a foothold be­yond the re­gion.

At a time when the coun­try is fo­cussed on sta­bil­is­ing for­eign-ex­change earn­ings and broad­en­ing its pro­duc­tive base, Khan said such risks would be eco­nom­i­cal­ly ill-ad­vised.