GEORGETOWN, Guyana, CMC – 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) by enacting the Economic Recovery Act.
“We 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 foster the sustainable growth of our Caribbean Community.”
Gregoire said that the small economies of the Caribbean are, first and foremost, necessarily very open economies, which makes them particularly vulnerable to exogenous shocks.
“ We have limited internal markets on which to build competitive industries. We have limited sources of domestic investment. Therefore, we depend on trade and foreign investment for economic transformation and growth.”
He said the region also faces the existential threat of climate change through catastrophic natural shocks and the seemingly inevitable 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 catalyze the more effective insertion of CARICOM economies into the global economy.
He said the CSME, which allows for the free movement of goods, skills, labor, and services across the region, and its individual member states will still be significantly dependent on external trade relations to acquire 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 facilitate 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 emphasize 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 would discuss agricultural sustainability, food and nutrition security, matters about the CBI, trade in services, trade facilitation, and good regulatory practices.
“The two sides are expected to review the CBI, the US trade preference programs for the region and explore ways to enhance the trade and investment relationship between the United States and CARICOM,” the Secretariat said.
It said as CARICOM accelerates efforts to achieve the goal of a 25 percent 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.
and then , Felix Gregoire, Friday, said that the ninth meeting of the CARICOM-United){kind=link}