-chairman
Chairman of the Council for Trade and Economic Development (COTED) Clifford Marica has said that he was pleased with the recent deliberations related to the Caricom-Canada negotiations for a Trade and Development Agreement.

Marica, who is also Minister of Trade in Suriname, pointed out that further rounds of negotiations are to be undertaken this year, following the first round last year.

COTED wrapped up its 29th meeting recently with the chairman expressing conditional satisfaction at the progress made at the two-day forum, according to a news release from the Caricom Secretariat at Turkeyen.

Marica said he was happy that most of the 20-item agenda were dealt with expeditiously, but he was concerned about some matters on which there was little movement.

Among the weighty agenda items before the region’s trade ministers were Trade in Goods which encompassed matters related to the Common External Tariff (CET).

One area in which the meeting was very “fluent”, the chairman said, related to the establishment of a mechanism for the suspension of the CET.

The suspension of the CET on the importation of cement was one of the items on which there were lengthy and robust discussions. “… Given the kind of issues we had on the agenda and given the way in which we dealt with them, I would say I am satisfied. I am not satisfied with the cement issue…,” the COTED chairman was quoted as saying, even as he acknowledged that it was a difficult and sensitive matter. And high on the meeting’s agenda was the consideration of a report on the status of implementation of the Caricom Single Market and Economy (CSME), the region’s flagship programme.

The report found that the Caricom Single Market was functioning but there were gaps in the legislative and institutional/infrastructural framework that needed to be addressed.

Meanwhile, the meeting recorded little movement on Contingent Rights. While there was an appreciation for the critical importance of free movement of the factors of production to the functioning of the CSME, member states continued to cite capacity and resource constraints as the main reasons for their reservations on some of those rights.

However, member states agreed to complete their national consultations on Contingent Rights by September in order to apprise the COTED of their progress in October.

Among the other matters the ministers dealt with were agriculture, trade, development of the services sector, information and communication technology for development and the implementation of the      EC-CARIFORUM Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA).

The COTED decisions were placed before the Community Council of Ministers ahead of the Heads of Government Intersessional Meeting to be held next month.