KINGSTON–A broad-based pri­vate sec­tor work­ing group has been formed to ex­am­ine and make rec­om­men­da­tions on the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) and oth­er free trade agree­ments.The work­ing group rep­re­sents mem­bers of the Ja­maica Cham­ber of Com­merce, the Ja­maica Ex­porters' As­so­ci­a­tion, the Ja­maica Man­u­fac­tur­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (JMA), and the Pri­vate Sec­tor Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Ja­maica.

T&T ex­ports to Ja­maica have been a con­stant source of fric­tion in the north Caribbean coun­try as man­u­fac­tur­ers in Ja­maica com­plain that T&T man­u­fac­tur­ers ben­e­fit from sub­sidised elec­tric­i­ty.Cari­com ex­ports to Ja­maica, which are dom­i­nat­ed by ex­ports from T&T, have fall­en con­sis­tent­ly be­tween 2008 and 2012, ac­cord­ing to the Sta­tis­ti­cal In­sti­tute of Ja­maica. In 2008, Cari­com ex­ports to Ja­maica amount­ed to US$1.68 bil­lion, but this de­clined by al­most half to US$858 mil­lion last year.

Cari­com ex­ports to Ja­maica de­clined by 15 per cent be­tween 2011 and 2012, falling from US$989.3 mil­lion in 2011 to US$858.6 mil­lion in 2012.A state­ment from the group said the de­ci­sion was based on feed­back from their mem­bers and the crit­i­cal role trade agree­ments will play as Ja­maica makes ad­just­ments un­der its pro­gramme with the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF).

In May, the Wash­ing­ton-based fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion ap­proved a US$932.3 mil­lion loan un­der its Ex­tend­ed Fund Fa­cil­i­ty (EFF) for Ja­maica.The four-year EFF will sup­port the Ja­maica gov­ern­ment's com­pre­hen­sive eco­nom­ic re­form agen­da and forms a crit­i­cal part of a to­tal fund­ing pack­age of two bil­lion US dol­lars from Ja­maica's mul­ti­lat­er­al part­ners in­clud­ing the World Bank and the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB), with each hav­ing pre­lim­i­nar­i­ly agreed to al­lo­cate US$510 mil­lion over the next four years.

JMA pres­i­dent, Bri­an Pen­gel­ley said the for­ma­tion of the work­ing group will en­sure that the pri­vate sec­tor is part of the so­lu­tion to Ja­maica's trade is­sues with the re­gion.In the state­ment, the work­ing group said it would nec­es­sary rec­om­men­da­tions to the gov­ern­ment on is­sues re­lat­ing to re­gion­al trade re­la­tions and would al­so de­ter­mine whether there is mer­it to com­plaints from mem­bers re­gard­ing in­tra-re­gion­al trad­ing.