Javascript Menu by Deluxe-Menu.com

SKNBuzz Radio - Strictly Local Music Toon Center
My Account | Contact Us  

Our Partner For Official online store of the Phoenix Suns Jerseys

 Home  >  Headlines  >  NEWS
Posted: Saturday 27 September, 2008 at 12:52 PM

    Experts positive EPA vital to SKN, Caribbean future

     

    By Ryan Haas
    Reporter-SKNVibes.com

     

    BASSETERRE, St. Kitts - TWO international trade experts, one local and the other visiting, emphatically made a case to the public Thursday night (Sept. 25) for a better understanding and greater acceptance of the CARIFORUM-European Union Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), which both said was “the best deal available to the Caribbean” at this time.

     

    The visiting Director General of the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery, Henry Gill, said the EPA would be necessary if CARIFORUM member states are going to continue successfully developing on a world market stage that is increasingly liberalised by the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

     

    “This is an agreement that has raised a lot of concerns and apprehensions in the region. The question really is, ‘Would we be able to secure something that really benefits us, rather than benefits them?’

     

    “The fact of the matter is that we have secured something…that should benefit us in a significant way,” Gill said. “I say should, because an agreement is just a piece of paper and governments have to make the EPA work, but what is in there is eminently workable.”
    The EPA would serve as successor to previously non-reciprocal trade relationships between CARIFORUM countries and the EU, in which the former were given preferential treatment and the WTO is increasingly trying to put an end to.

    According to Gill, one of CARIFORUM’s best reasons for signing the EPA is that it would allow the region to slowly move toward inevitable trade liberalisation and, in the meantime, reap benefits from fully opened European markets.  ~~Adz:Right~~

    “[The EPA] is a highly asymmetrical agreement which will minimise the risk to CARIFORUM economies while giving them the maximum benefits almost from day one,” he said.

    By mandate of the EPA, Europe will open its markets immediately to all exports from CARIFORUM countries that meet the “origin rules” of the agreement. This essentially means that all the exports meeting the rules will have no tariffs or quotas imposed upon them, barring sugar and rice which are already in the process of being liberalised. 

    Gill was quick to note that signing the EPA does not mean Caribbean goods and services would be liberalised over a short period of time. He said rather that no new items would be liberalised by the deal until January 2011, and even then items will only gradually be liberalised over a period of 25 years.

     

    Additionally, he said negotiations of the EPA yielded a list of 493 “sensitive” items, approximately 13 percent of CARIFORUM’s imports from the EU, which will never have tariffs placed on them.

     

    Speaking from a governmental perspective, the St. Kitts-Nevis Minister with responsibility for International Trade, Dr. the Hon. Timothy Harris, said the EPA is truly beneficial to CARIFORUM because it speaks not only to goods, but also to services as part of the agreement.

     

    “In the OECS we are saying that over 80 percent of our economies are in the services sector. So, if we are just talking about a goods agreement, that would not be good enough for us.”

     

    Gill added that in the long run, goods from the Caribbean tend to have a negative trade balance, while services tend to have positive trade balances for their countries of origin. 

    The opposition to a ‘goods-only’ agreement comes shortly after it was reported from this week’s 63rd General Assembly of the United Nations that Guyana President Bharrat Jagdeo once again lambasted the EPA as “exploitive arrangement” by the EU, and called for a ‘goods-only’ arrangement.

     

    Harris called malcontents, such as Jagdeo, at this late stage of the EPA process a “disappointment of the professional will of the Caribbean”.

     

    “The truth is that we are a part of the world and there is no arrangement where we can opt out of that. What we need to do is position ourselves as best as we can in a world which is hostile and challenging in order to ensure we are at least able to do well for ourselves, if not reasonably well,” the Minister said.

     

    Both Gill and Harris agreed that it was time for CARIFORUM countries to put the EPA into action because, as Harris put it, “whoever moves first will reap the most benefits and will be able to become more familiar with the trade policies sooner”.

     

    It was revealed that October 15 is likely to be the date that CARIFORUM countries officially sign the EPA, and Gill said he was hopeful Guyana, as the only country still resistant to the arrangement, would have its doubts allayed by that time.

     

     

     

Copyright © 2024 SKNVibes, Inc. All rights reserved.
Privacy Policy   Terms of Service