For a coun­try as po­larised as T&T is on eco­nom­ic is­sues, the one top­ic on which there is al­most to­tal con­sen­sus is the im­por­tant role that non-en­er­gy ex­ports must play in the coun­try's fu­ture.

De­clin­ing en­er­gy out­put, cou­pled with the volatil­i­ty of glob­al prices for T&T's ex­ports of oil, nat­ur­al gas and petro­chem­i­cals, have en­er­gised the need to di­ver­si­fy T&T's for­eign ex­change earn­ings, plac­ing ad­di­tion­al em­pha­sis on the im­por­tance of non-en­er­gy ex­ports.

Giv­en this con­text, it is nec­es­sary to reg­is­ter dis­ap­point­ment that Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was un­able to at­tend the 49th reg­u­lar meet­ing of the Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment in Mon­tego Bay, Ja­maica. The Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter is yet to prof­fer an ex­pla­na­tion on what were the “cer­tain na­tion­al is­sues” that pre­vent­ed her from at­tend­ing the meet­ing. She would have been ide­al­ly placed to in­ter­vene on sev­er­al of the is­sues raised at the ses­sion.

Speak­ing at the clos­ing news con­fer­ence on Tues­day, Cari­com Chair, Ja­maica Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness, out­lined the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the re­gion's ex­ports to the US could be im­pact­ed by that coun­try's tar­iffs on im­ports from all coun­tries, the time pe­ri­od for which has been ex­tend­ed to Au­gust 1.

Giv­en the capri­cious na­ture of US trade pol­i­cy, Hol­ness said it was nec­es­sary for Cari­com na­tions to in­crease trade among com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers.

“Be­cause even with­in Cari­com, the trade is prob­a­bly less than 15 per cent in­ter­nal rel­a­tive to to­tal trade. So, the ques­tion is, what are you go­ing to do with this new base tar­iff that’s im­ple­ment­ed? But one of the things we have to do is to di­ver­si­fy our trade,” Hol­ness said.

T&T's man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor is set to ben­e­fit from any in­crease in trade with­in the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty, even though T&T-made prod­ucts al­ready dom­i­nate su­per­mar­kets across the re­gion.

How­ev­er, Hol­ness ac­knowl­edged there are still chal­lenges to strength­en­ing trade with­in Cari­com, as he fo­cused on the non-tar­iff bar­ri­ers and oth­er mea­sures that form ob­sta­cles to trade. He said Cari­com has es­tab­lished a com­mit­tee head­ed by the for­eign min­is­ters and min­is­ters of trade from Ja­maica and Bar­ba­dos "to se­ri­ous­ly ex­am­ine how we can re­duce, if not to­tal­ly re­move, these non-tar­iff bar­ri­ers and to stan­dard­ise pro­ce­dures across the board to fa­cil­i­tate greater trade in­tra-re­gion­al­ly."

This is a wel­come de­vel­op­ment and au­thor­i­ties here in Port-of-Spain must en­sure there is co­op­er­a­tion with this Cari­com non-tar­iff bar­ri­er team to en­sure T&T is not im­ped­ing any im­ports from the re­gion.

One is­sue that may cause prob­lems for T&T's ex­ports of non-en­er­gy man­u­fac­tured ex­ports to the re­gion, is the com­plaint by St Vin­cent Prime Min­is­ter Ralph Gon­salves that his coun­try's traders and mar­ket ven­dors are fac­ing prob­lems get­ting paid in a con­vert­ible cur­ren­cy when they sell their goods in T&T.

Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar must nip this long­stand­ing is­sue in the bud be­fore it be­comes a sore on the body of re­gion­al re­la­tion­ships. She should al­so com­mu­ni­cate with her An­tiguan coun­ter­part, Gas­ton Browne, who raised at the Cari­com meet­ing the is­sue of the US$60 mil­lion that the pre­vi­ous Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress ad­min­is­tra­tion had promised to pol­i­cy­hold­ers of Cli­co and British Amer­i­can (In­sur­ance) in the East­ern Caribbean.

Giv­en the im­por­tance of non-en­er­gy ex­ports to the re­gion, the T&T Prime Min­is­ter must work to en­sure no coun­try in Cari­com has any is­sues with this coun­try that could im­pact its trade with the re­gion.