Canadian High Commissioner to Guyana Charles Court has told Stabroek Business that Canada is seeking to further strengthen its already considerable trade, business and investment ties with the Caribbean.
Canada is also seeking to provide support for the current critical initiative being spearheaded by Guyana to consolidate the region’s food security through the strengthening of its agricultural capacity and the increased consumption of food produced in the region.
The High Commissioner’s restatement of Canada’s commitment to supporting Canada/Caribbean investment and business ties and regional food security comes in the wake of the crucial regional agricultural investment forum which gets underway in Georgetown later today. He disclosed that two Canadian firms will be participating in the forum which he expects will be seeking to bring ‘bankable projects” to the attention of potential investors.
And according to Court the region could witness a heightened level Canadian trade and investment interest in the region arising out of a recent initiative by Canada’s Trade Commis-sioners in the Caribbean to enhance Canadian trade and investment interests in the region. Court told Stabroek Business that the Canadian envoys had recently concluded an exercise in Canada during which they had met with “hundreds of companies across the country” – from Vancouver to Halifax – in the agro-business, energy and other sectors many of which had done business in the Caribbean – but most of which were new to the region. “Over the next few months I expect that we will see the result of that cross-country effort in the form of increased business interests and business contacts with the Caribbean,” Court told Stabroek Business.
Court said that Canadian agro-business companies were looking both at supplying their products to the region as well as pursuing initiatives that would involve inputs from the region. He added that there had also been engagements with Canadian business enterprises in both the traditional and renewable energy sectors, “We believe that there are lots of opportunities and we will certainly be promoting that interest in the years ahead,” Court said.
Court told Stabroek Business that Canada remains committed to supporting the region’s efforts to enhance its agricultural capacity – a commitment which it made at the 2007 donors forum in regional agriculture – insofar as those pursuits met the objectives set out for its Caribbean regional development programme.
According to Court Canada continued to maintain a “very strong investment stake” in the Caribbean. He pointed to the Canadian market and investment interests in electrical and electronic equipment, seafood, meats, wood, paper and plastic products, engineering and banking services and management consultancies in the Caribbean adding that during their recent engagements with business enterprises in Canada, the Trade Commissioners were also sought to reach out to several new potential investors and partners in some of these sectors.
Meanwhile the High Commissioner told Stabroek Business that Canada is “ready to sit down as soon as CARICOM is ready to sit down” to commence discourse on the conclusion of a CARiCOM/Canada Free Trade Agreement, a development which he said “will encourage Caribbean exports to Canada. Court said that Canada was looking forward to consulting with government and with the business and academic communities in Guyana as part of the process of determining how the regional free trade agreement should be structured and how it should be implemented once it is agreed.
Last July, a meeting between several CARICOM heads and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Barbados endorsed the idea of a CARICOM/Canada Free Trade Agreement. Court said that a CARICOM/Canada Free Trade Agreement would cover a wider range of issues than the existing CARIBCAN preferential agreement. ‘A free trade agreement will include services and investment and will also facilitate provision for other forms of assistance to the Caribbean region aimed at ensuring that businesses in the region can benefit from the Agreement ,” Court said. He added that a CARICOM/Canada Free Trade Agreement will also ensure that Suriname and Haiti – the two CARICOM countries that do not currently benefit from CARIBCAN – benefit from the new free trade arrangement.
