The Caricom Council for Trade and Economic Deve-lopment (COTED) is meeting today in The Bahamas to take a decision about the removal or reduction of the Common External Tariff (CET) on some goods.

According to the Caricom Secretariat the 24th Special Meeting of COTED will discuss this measure in an effort to stem the rising cost of living in the Region. It said too ‘Poverty and the Rising Cost of Living’ was one of the agenda items at the 12th Special Meeting of Heads of State and Government of the Caribbean Community last December. This issue will also be featured on the agenda of the 19th Inter-sessional Meeting of the Heads of State and Government set for March 7 and 8 in Nassau.

At the Georgetown meeting in December the heads agreed that the CET was the most appropriate instrument for an intervention at the Community level to address the issue of the rising cost of living. A Technical Team was subsequently established to review a set of commodities which have a significant weight in the Consumer Price Index; are not significantly produced or have a close substitute in the region, and which attract a CET.

At the 25th Meeting hosted in January in Georgetown, COTED asked member states to submit national lists of items on which they would be prepared to reduce or remove the CET.

This decision was made after lengthy, intense but incomplete discussions in search of a single common list to fulfil the mandate of the Heads of Government.

Additionally, the Special meeting will also consider the Report of the Meeting of the Reflections Group which was held in Jamaica last month. The Reflections Group re-viewed Caricom’s experience and approach to external trade negotiations using the Cari-forum-EC Economic Partner-ship Agreement case. The meeting will be presented with the Agreement following the completion of a legal review.

The agenda will also in-clude an update on, and outlook for the multilateral trade negotiations under the World Trade Organisation.