Trade and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment min­is­ters from the 15-mem­ber Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) be­gan a two day meet­ing in Guyana on Tues­day against the back­ground of many trade-re­lat­ed chal­lenges fac­ing the re­gion, and in a geo-po­lit­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment which is chang­ing very rapid­ly.

CARI­COM Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al, Dr. Car­la Bar­nett, ad­dress­ing the 60th meet­ing of the Coun­cil of Trade and Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment (COT­ED), said that the re­cent tar­iff shocks are a stark re­minder of the need to di­ver­si­fy the re­gion’s trade and eco­nom­ic re­la­tions.

“We must re­dou­ble our ef­forts to deep­en ex­ist­ing, and ex­plore new mar­kets and de­vel­op new part­ner­ships, if the re­gion is to ad­vance its goals of eco­nom­ic growth and sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment,” she said.

Unit­ed States Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has im­ple­ment­ed a se­ries of trade tar­iffs on coun­tries world­wide, in­clud­ing the Caribbean, in a move econ­o­mists and oth­er traders say is de­signed to dis­man­tle much of the ar­chi­tec­ture of the glob­al econ­o­my and trig­ger broad­er trade wars.

In the case of the Caribbean, Trump an­nounced a 10 per cent tar­iff on most re­gion­al coun­tries, while in the case of Guyana, the tar­iff is as high, as 38 per cent.

Bar­nett told the con­fer­ence that as such, the work to ad­dress the way for­ward in trade re­la­tions with the Unit­ed States; the bi­lat­er­al ne­go­ti­a­tions with Colom­bia; and the out­stand­ing Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the Be­lize-El Sal­vador Par­tial Scope Agree­ment, must be giv­en fo­cused at­ten­tion.

”Equal­ly, we need to pro­mote re­gion­al pro­duc­tion and ex­pand in­tra-re­gion­al trade by up­dat­ing poli­cies and prac­tices to sup­port en­tre­pre­neur­ship and make trade and busi­ness de­vel­op­ment eas­i­er. We al­so have an im­per­a­tive to ad­dress the im­ped­i­ments to trade and re­move long­stand­ing is­sues of “non-com­pli­ance” from the agen­da.”

She said that a re­port on the Re­gion­al In­dus­tri­al Pol­i­cy will be pre­sent­ed tat the meet­ing, not­ing “this pol­i­cy can be­come an im­por­tant as­pect of the deep­en­ing of the re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion strat­e­gy go­ing for­ward, and I urge you to give fo­cused at­ten­tion as to how it will be fi­nalised and im­ple­ment­ed”.

Bar­nett said that the re­gion al­so needs to more ef­fi­cient­ly har­ness the com­pe­ten­cies of its re­gion­al in­sti­tu­tions and work more ef­fec­tive­ly to­geth­er to ad­vance the work of the 15-mem­ber Com­mu­ni­ty.

“Time is too short, and re­sources are too scarce for us to con­tin­ue to work in si­los when col­lab­o­ra­tion and joint ef­fort can save re­sources, both hu­man and fi­nan­cial, and de­liv­er bet­ter re­sults.”

She said that the Guyana-based CARI­COM Sec­re­tari­at con­tin­ues to seek to work col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly with stake­hold­ers, “and we will see this when the Sec­re­tari­at team re­ports on work along­side part­ners like the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank (CDB) and the CARI­COM Pri­vate Sec­tor Or­ga­ni­za­tion (CP­SO), on crit­i­cal re­search and analy­sis on trade chal­lenges”.

The CARI­COM Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al said she want­ed to pub­licly recog­nise the work done with the CP­SO on is­sues of trade ad­vo­ca­cy, par­tic­u­lar­ly with re­spect to the Amer­i­ca First Trade Pol­i­cy and re­lat­ed ac­tions against cer­tain ship­ping and mar­itime in­ter­ests.

”This COT­ED has made progress on a num­ber of is­sues. For oth­ers, fi­nal­i­sa­tion of work is pos­si­ble. Among these is the ur­gency of ad­vanc­ing the com­ple­tion, and im­ple­men­ta­tion of the re­vised Com­mon Ex­ter­nal Tar­iff and the Com­mu­ni­ty’s Rules of Ori­gin Regime,” she said, urg­ing the trade and eco­nom­ic min­is­ters to make full use of the CARI­COM Treaty’s rules and flex­i­bil­i­ties as it ad­dress­es the mat­ters be­fore it, es­pe­cial­ly the most sen­si­tive. —GEORGE­TOWN, Guyana (CMC)