To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

Yes­ter­day, in an ed­i­to­r­i­al head­lined "Trinidad's be­ing un­fair, Kam­la," the Ja­maica Glean­er launched yet an­oth­er at­tack on this coun­try's en­er­gy pol­i­cy and its im­pact on trade with­in the Cari­com sin­gle mar­ket. The news­pa­per, one of the old­est in the re­gion, ap­prov­ing­ly quot­ed the Ja­maica's Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, Christo­pher Tufton, as sug­gest­ing that "Trinida­di­an agro-proces­sors en­joy an un­fair ad­van­tage on two counts. They have cheap, sub­sidised en­er­gy and are al­lowed to im­port raw ma­te­ri­als us­ing an opaque tar­iff regime."

Tufton had com­plained re­cent­ly that T&T man­u­fac­tur­ers are im­port­ing peanuts from ex­tra-re­gion­al sources "with un­clear du­ty arrange­ments," pro­cess­ing these peanuts us­ing "sub­sidised en­er­gy" and sell­ing the snacks in Ja­maica free of tar­iff, in ac­cor­dance with the com­mon mar­ket prin­ci­ple. On the is­sue of the "un­clear" du­ty arrange­ments, the rules of ori­gin prin­ci­ple in in­ter­na­tion­al trade is un­usu­al­ly clear and thor­ough­ly test­ed in many tri­bunals.

If Ja­maica be­lieves that its peanut grow­ers are be­ing dis­ad­vant This is not the first time the news­pa­per has made this charge with­out both­er­ing to put for­ward one scin­til­la of ev­i­dence. The news­pa­per's ar­gu­ment amounts to this: the cost of elec­tric­i­ty in T&T is a frac­tion of the cost in Ja­maica and there­fore elec­tric­i­ty in T&T must be sub­sidised. The fact is this coun­try's large food proces­sors sub­sidise res­i­den­tial users of elec­tric­i­ty, ac­cord­ing to the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion (RIC), in its fi­nal de­ter­mi­na­tion in 2006 of the ap­pli­ca­tion for a rate in­crease by elec­tric­i­ty util­i­ty T&TEC. The RIC, af­ter an ex­haus­tive study which is avail­able on­line, con­clud­ed: "The cur­rent lev­els of elec­tric­i­ty tar­iffs con­tain a large de­gree?of cross-sub­sidy, with in­dus­tri­al cus­tomers pay­ing well above the eco­nom­ic cost of sup­ply, cross-sub­si­dis­ing oth­er cus­tomers to the tune of $215 mil­lion in 2005. Many of?these in­dus­tri­al con­sumers op­er­ate in an in­creas­ing­ly com­pet­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment,?typ­i­cal­ly be­ing sub­ject to na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion."

An­oth­er half-truth that the Ja­maica Glean­er has re­peat­ed on nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions is that T&T's sub­sidy of its man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor leads to a dis­tor­tion in the trade be­tween this coun­try and Ja­maica and to a trade bal­ance heav­i­ly weight­ed in this coun­try's favour. In yes­ter­day's ed­i­to­r­i­al, the Glean­er stat­ed: "An im­por­tant point to re­call is that Ja­maica runs a trade deficit with Cari­com of near­ly US$1 bil­lion–the bulk of that with Trinidad and To­ba­go–for oil-re­lat­ed prod­ucts and processed foods." Ac­tu­al­ly, ac­cord­ing to the Ex­ter­nal Trade Bul­letin pub­lished by the Sta­tis­ti­cal In­sti­tute of Ja­maica on March 26, 2010, Ja­maica in­curred a trade deficit of US$671.3 mil­lion with its Cari­com neigh­bours in 2009–56 per cent less than the US$1.5 bil­lion deficit record­ed in 2008. The fact is that Ja­maica's to­tal im­ports in 2009 amount­ed to US$5,065.7 mil­lion, while its to­tal ex­ports were US$1,320.2 mil­lion. Ja­maica's im­ports in 2009 were near­ly four times more than its ex­ports. Its trade deficit last year was US$3,745.5 mil­lion.

At US$737.7 mil­lion, Ja­maica's im­ports from Cari­com were equal to 14.5 per cent of its to­tal im­ports in 2009–sug­gest­ing that more than 85 per cent of that is­land's im­ports came from out­side the Cari­com re­gion.

It is a fact that last year, 70 per cent of Ja­maica's im­ports from Cari­com, some US$515 mil­lion, were in the min­er­al fu­els cat­e­go­ry (oil, gaso­line kerosene and jet fu­el). It is a fact that last year Ja­maica's to­tal im­ports from Cari­com de­clined by 54 per cent and that Ja­maica's ex­ports to Cari­com ac­tu­al­ly in­creased mar­gin­al­ly last year (al­beit from a small base). Clear­ly, then giv­en the ev­i­dence from its own sta­tis­ti­cal in­sti­tute, the re­peat­ed at­tempts by the Glean­er to blame T&T for the weak­ness of its man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor are com­plete­ly un­found­ed and dan­ger­ous as such base­less and re­lent­less scape­goat­ing may en­gen­der an­ti-Trinida­di­an sen­ti­ment in the north Caribbean is­land.

Ja­maica is ill served by such emo­tive opin­ions that are so far re­moved from the facts and we call on the news­pa­per to de­sist from this prac­tice im­me­di­ate­ly.