CAS­TRIES, St Lu­cia–A new World Bank re­port says there is con­sid­er­able po­ten­tial for boost­ing trade and ac­cel­er­at­ing growth in the re­gion.The re­port, Trade mat­ters: New op­por­tu­ni­ties for the Caribbean, which was re­leased yes­ter­day at the Third Re­gion­al Caribbean Growth Fo­rum, high­lights that trade plays an im­por­tant role in job cre­ation.

"Con­tin­ued ef­forts to im­prove trade fa­cil­i­ta­tion and step up in­vest­ments in re­search and in­no­va­tion, as well as qual­i­ty ed­u­ca­tion, will help im­prove skills and gen­er­ate well-paid jobs in the Caribbean," said Jorge Fa­mil­iar, the World Bank vice pres­i­dent for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.

The re­port al­so high­lights that the re­gion's trade per­for­mance is lim­it­ed by lack of di­ver­si­ty and lim­it­ed in­no­va­tion. The num­ber of patent ap­pli­ca­tions in the Caribbean has been low­er than in oth­er re­gion of the world. Look­ing at emerg­ing trade op­por­tu­ni­ties, the re­port shows that Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) agree­ments have dri­ven a rapid in­crease in in­tra-re­gion­al trade and that a com­mon mar­ket would lead to a sub­stan­tial rise in ex­ports in the re­gion.

The Caribbean share in glob­al trade fell from three per cent in the 1970s to near­ly a quar­ter per cent in 2012.With the ex­cep­tion of the Ba­hamas, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lu­cia, Be­lize and Haiti, ex­ports from Caribbean coun­tries to grow­ing emerg­ing mar­kets re­main small.The re­port sug­gests three main op­por­tu­ni­ties to boost trade and gen­er­ate a pos­i­tive cy­cle of shared pros­per­i­ty in the re­gion.

It said deep­en­ing trade in­te­gra­tion with North Amer­i­ca would boost trade and ac­cel­er­ate growth in the re­gion."The gains for the Caribbean of en­try to the North Amer­i­can Free Trade Agree­ment (Naf­ta) would be six times the size of the gains for im­ple­ment­ing a Caribbean com­mon mar­ket. The ne­go­ti­a­tions to­ward a Cana­da-Cari­com free trade agree­ment launched in 2007 should al­so be pur­sued," it said.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the World Bank not­ed, im­prov­ing the trade fa­cil­i­ta­tion en­vi­ron­ment through mod­ernised cus­tom sys­tems and bet­ter con­nec­tiv­i­ty would have a ma­jor im­pact on trade.It said ef­forts across the re­gion to mod­ernise cus­toms ad­min­is­tra­tions and bor­der man­age­ment should be ac­cel­er­at­ed.

It not­ed that with the ex­pan­sion of the Pana­ma Canal and the ex­pect­ed in­crease in trans­ship­ment, re­cent ini­tia­tives to mod­ernise ports in­fra­struc­tures and reg­u­la­tion are be­ing car­ried out in Ja­maica, the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Ba­hamas and Haiti.Im­prov­ing the busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment and in­vest­ment cli­mate would be es­sen­tial to en­hance pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and com­pet­i­tive­ness, the re­port fur­ther not­ed.

"While Caribbean economies re­cent­ly adopt­ed a record num­ber of re­forms im­prov­ing the lo­cal busi­ness reg­u­la­to­ry cli­mate, ex­port­ing firms re­main af­fect­ed by the lim­it­ed ac­cess to elec­tric­i­ty, telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion and trans­port ser­vices, and the need for poli­cies to fur­ther pro­mote tech­nol­o­gy ca­pa­bil­i­ty and in­no­va­tion. More ef­forts are need­ed to im­prove skills and ac­cess to in­fra­struc­ture and fi­nance," the World Bank said.

Some of the pro­posed pol­i­cy rec­om­men­da­tions are be­ing dis­cussed at the Caribbean Growth Fo­rum in view of iden­ti­fy­ing new strate­gies and tools to stim­u­late com­pet­i­tive­ness, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and en­tre­pre­neur­ship. (CMC)