Do­mini­ca’s am­bas­sador to the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM), Fe­lix Gre­goire, Fri­day, said that the ninth meet­ing of the CARI­COM-Unit­ed States Trade and In­vest­ment Coun­cil (TIC) pro­vides an op­por­tu­ni­ty to as­sess ini­tia­tives to pro­mote the sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment of mem­ber coun­tries through trade.

Gre­goire, who is co-chair­ing the one-day meet­ing with Am­bas­sador Jayme White, the Deputy US Trade Rep­re­sen­ta­tive, said it has been 40 years since Wash­ing­ton es­tab­lished the Caribbean Basin Ini­tia­tive (CBI) through the en­act­ment of the Caribbean Basin Eco­nom­ic Re­cov­ery Act.

“We there­fore, wel­come this time­ly high-lev­el re-en­gage­ment with the Unit­ed States, in the con­text of our trade and in­vest­ment frame­work agree­ment. It is an op­por­tu­ni­ty for us to share with the Unit­ed States our as­sess­ment of ini­tia­tives to pro­mote the sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment of our mem­ber states through trade."

Gre­goire said that with the Caribbean-US Trade and In­vest­ment Coun­cil hav­ing last met in 2019, the meet­ing al­so pro­vides an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­set the ex­ist­ing trade and in­vest­ment re­la­tion­ship to en­sure that to­geth­er, “we ex­pand eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties, and fos­ter­ing the sus­tain­able growth of our Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty.”

Gre­goire said that the small economies of the Caribbean are first, and fore­most and nec­es­sar­i­ly very open economies which make them par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble to ex­oge­nous shocks.

“We have lim­it­ed in­ter­nal mar­kets on which to build com­pet­i­tive in­dus­tries. We have lim­it­ed sources of do­mes­tic in­vest­ment. We are there­fore nec­es­sar­i­ly de­pen­dent on trade and for­eign in­vest­ment for eco­nom­ic trans­for­ma­tion and growth.”

He said the re­gion al­so faces the ex­is­ten­tial threat of cli­mate change, both through cat­a­stroph­ic nat­ur­al shocks, and the seem­ing­ly in­ex­orable de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of the glob­al en­vi­ron­ment, a de­te­ri­o­ra­tion to which our com­mu­ni­ty makes an in­signif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion.

“Nev­er­the­less in the face of these ex­ist­ing vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties, the Com­mu­ni­ty is mak­ing a de­ter­mined ef­fort to strength­en and deep­en re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion through the ex­pand­ing im­ple­men­ta­tion of its sin­gle mar­ket and econ­o­my, the CSME.”

Gre­goire said that the CSME is in­tend­ed to lessen the dis­ad­van­tages of small size and catal­yse the more ef­fec­tive in­ser­tion of CARI­COM economies in­to the glob­al econ­o­my.

He said the CSME, which al­lows for the free move­ment of goods, skills, labour and ser­vices across the re­gion, and its in­di­vid­ual mem­ber states will still nev­er­the­less be sig­nif­i­cant­ly de­pen­dent on ex­ter­nal trade re­la­tions for its ac­qui­si­tion of a wide range of goods and ser­vices.

“For CARI­COM, trade with the Unit­ed States is a crit­i­cal di­men­sion of such re­la­tions es­pe­cial­ly in the con­text of the CBI arrange­ments, which this coun­cil is in­tend­ed to fa­cil­i­ty and strength­en.

“You can see the great im­por­tance we at­tach to those pro­grams from the lev­el of rep­re­sen­ta­tion of our side. CARI­COM wel­comes the con­tin­u­ing com­mit­ment of the Unit­ed States to pro­vid­ing sup­port to the re­gion in all the pri­or­i­ty ar­eas iden­ti­fied,” Gre­goire told the TIC.

He said CARI­COM al­so rec­og­nizes the val­ue of the many oth­er en­gage­ments with the Unit­ed States, in­clud­ing the Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as di­a­logue, he said “that com­pletes the work we do in this fo­rum."

“We em­pha­sise the im­por­tance of in­ter­sec­tion­al En­gage­ment in var­i­ous agen­cies of the Unit­ed States that this fo­rum will cat­alyze. It is that work that this Coun­cil will fa­cil­i­tate, over­see and eval­u­ate."

“We there­fore look for­ward to the fo­cused and pro­duc­tive ex­changes and to the mo­men­tum that we ex­pect to gen­er­ate in all ar­eas, to im­prove the bal­anced growth in trade and in­vest­ment be­tween us,” Gre­goire added.

The Guyana-based CARI­COM Sec­re­tari­at said the meet­ing will dis­cuss agri­cul­tur­al sus­tain­abil­i­ty, food and nu­tri­tion se­cu­ri­ty as well as mat­ters per­tain­ing to the CBI, trade in ser­vices, trade fa­cil­i­ta­tion and good reg­u­la­to­ry prac­tices.

“The two sides are ex­pect­ed to re­view the CBI, the US trade pref­er­ence pro­grammes for the re­gion and ex­plore ways in which to en­hance the trade and in­vest­ment re­la­tion­ship be­tween the Unit­ed States and CARI­COM,” the Sec­re­tari­at said in a state­ment.

It said as CARI­COM ac­cel­er­ates ef­forts to achieve the goal of 25 per cent re­duc­tion in food im­ports by the year 2025, the dis­cus­sion on agri­cul­tur­al sus­tain­abil­i­ty and food and nu­tri­tion se­cu­ri­ty would high­light the use of biotech­nol­o­gy and oth­er tools to pro­mote cli­mate re­silience in agri­cul­ture, and CARI­COM’s 25 by 2025 ini­tia­tive.

“On trade fa­cil­i­ta­tion, of­fi­cials are ex­pect­ed to dis­cuss av­enues for stream­lined pro­ce­dures to fa­cil­i­tate ex­ports and the par­tic­i­pa­tion of mi­cro, small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es (MSMEs) in in­ter­na­tion­al trade."

GEORGE­TOWN, Guyana, Oct 13, CMC –

CMC/gt/ir/2023