—Jagdeo
The national consultations on the Caribbean’s Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with Europe will be held on September 6 and 7, President Jagdeo said yesterday.

Jagdeo had publicly stated that Guyana would not be signing on to the EPA until national consultations on the issue were completed.

If the  president had his way, only the ‘goods only’ section of the EPA with Europe would be agreed to while the other sections would be done away with; however, he said, if a refusal to sign meant that tariffs would be applied against the country’s exports, he would sign.

The president made the comments at a seminar on the EPA, which was organized by various trade union groupings and held at the Cheddi Jagan Research Centre yesterday.  The EPA, a trade agreement between the European Union (EU) and CARIFORUM (Caribbean Community [Caricom] nations plus the Dominican Republic) is due to be signed on September 2 in Barbados.

Earlier this week the St Lucian government stated too that it would delay signing the agreement. Prominent regional academics have also raised concerns about the EPA and its implications for the region.
Jagdeo, the featured speaker at the seminar, yesterday declared that there were troubling times ahead noting that were the agreement in its present form to signed, in future negotiations with Canada and the US, they would demand similar concessions since a precedent had already been set  and this would be “catastrophic” for the region.

The president noted the EPA should be a development agreement in nature but it was not and were it not for the threat of tariffs being applied to the country’s exports, Guyana would never sign the agreement. He said that the agreement was flawed and had very few development features. The head-of-state pointed out that while 75% of services would be liberalized, there was very little that the region could send into Europe and what the agreement had taken away from regional governments was the ability to protect domestic investors.
He further declared that the EPA would undermine the Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME) and would even supersede it. “I don’t think we can do both at the same time,” he said, noting that if there was a conflict the EPA would take precedence over the CSME.

The president added though that there were some good features to the agreement  there should be a full airing of issues with the European Commission and the Regional Negotiating Machinery should be invited to take part.

He had earlier accused the European Commission of double standards and stated that the negotiations had not been done as equal partners and “essentially, they got their way.” Pointing to the EU’s cut in sugar prices, he said that Guyana would lose over US$40M per year.

Asked about the sugar industry and whether the La Bonne Intention (LBI) factory might be closed, Jagdeo said that the issue encompassed the survival of the sugar industry and if there were losses, there would be consequences.

He noted that production costs had risen and the government was not taking money from the treasury to subsidize loss-making entities as this had not worked in the past. “This is the reality,” he said pointing out that Guyana used about 40% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to import fuel.

“You can’t rack up big losses and then something doesn’t happen,” he stated emphasizing that no decision had been taken as yet to close any factory.