Cana­da has ob­tained ap­proval from the World Trade Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WTO) to ex­tend the Caribbean-Cana­da Trade Agree­ment (CARIB­CAN) un­til De­cem­ber 2033.

In a news re­lease yes­ter­day, the Min­istry of Trade not­ed, “CARIB­CAN grants Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ex­porters ac­cess to more than 38 mil­lion con­sumers in the Cana­di­an mar­ket, a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of which rep­re­sents the Trin­bag­on­ian di­as­po­ra in Cana­da, mak­ing the Cana­di­an mar­ket one with sig­nif­i­cant ex­port op­por­tu­ni­ties for lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers.”

Since 1986, CARIB­CAN has been a non-rec­i­p­ro­cal eco­nom­ic and trade de­vel­op­ment as­sis­tance pro­gramme of­fered to Com­mon­wealth Caribbean coun­tries and ter­ri­to­ries by the Gov­ern­ment of Cana­da.

The pro­gramme’s aim is to en­hance Com­mon­wealth Caribbean trade and ex­port earn­ings, im­prove the trade and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment prospects of the re­gion, pro­mote new in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties, and en­cour­age en­hanced eco­nom­ic in­te­gra­tion and co-op­er­a­tion.

Un­der this agree­ment, Caribbean coun­tries are al­lowed du­ty-free ac­cess in­to the Cana­di­an mar­ket for most com­modi­ties orig­i­nat­ing in Com­mon­wealth Caribbean coun­tries, in­clud­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The arrange­ment is non-rec­i­p­ro­cal, which means that Caribbean coun­tries are not re­quired to pro­vide du­ty-free ac­cess to Cana­di­an prod­ucts.

The Min­istry not­ed Cana­da has been con­sid­ered an im­por­tant trad­ing part­ner for Trinidad and To­ba­go, as in 2016 ex­ports to Cana­da in­creased from TT$405 mil­lion to TT$936 mil­lion in 2022. In 2021, Trinidad and To­ba­go was record­ed as the sin­gle largest ex­porter to Cana­da among CARIB­CAN ben­e­fi­cia­ries.

In that year, 98 per cent of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ex­ports such as methanol, rum and bis­cuits en­tered Cana­da du­ty-free un­der the CARIB­CAN arrange­ment un­der­lin­ing the in­stru­men­tal role of the arrange­ment in sup­port­ing the ex­port growth and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion goals of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try, in the news re­lease, said it is keen on in­creas­ing T&T’s util­i­sa­tion of the arrange­ment.

Ex­porters are there­fore en­cour­aged to em­ploy the ben­e­fits of CARIB­CAN to ex­pand ex­ports to the Cana­di­an mar­ket, said the Min­istry.

The Min­istry ex­plained that to en­sure that CARIB­CAN re­mains avail­able to coun­tries like T&T, Cana­da is re­quired to pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly ob­tain a waiv­er from the World Trade Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WTO).

In May 2023, the WTO grant­ed the waiv­er that would al­low Cana­da to con­tin­ue the CARIB­CAN arrange­ment un­til De­cem­ber 31, 2033.

The Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try ex­pressed its ap­pre­ci­a­tion to the Gov­ern­ment and peo­ple of Cana­da for their con­tin­ued sup­port to T&T and oth­er CARIB­CAN ben­e­fi­cia­ry coun­tries.