– Court
Canada’s High Commissioner to Guyana, Charles Court has said that the conclusion of a bilateral trade agreement between Canada and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) will afford regional consumers lower prices and improved choices while expanding opportunities for exporters of goods and services through the elimination or reduction of tariff barriers and the liberalization of the services sectors.
And according to Court such a bilateral agreement will also promote good governance based on transparent trade and investment rules while creating review mechanisms that would embrace labour rights and environmental management while allowing for public participation in raising concerns about critical trade and investment issues.
Addressing the Annual Awards Dinner of the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) on December 3, Court said that Canada is aware of the various geographic, economic and social constraints confronting CARICOM territories and was committed to working with the region to help address those problems. Court told the gathering that over the past ten years Canada had allocated CDN$600m to Caribbean programming through the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), including CDN$17.5m for the Caribbean Community Trade Competitiveness Programme. Additionally, the amount had included CDN$20m for the Caribbean Disaster Risk Management Programme and a further CDN$29m for the Caribbean Institutional Leadership Development Programme. In addition to these allocations Canada announced in September this year that it was allocating a further CDN$2.5m to the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery.
Meanwhile, according to Court, the regulatory systems under which Canadian banks operate have contributed to the country being spared the worst ravages of the global financial meltdown. Court said that while Canada has not been spared the effects of the current financial crisis, the fact that Canadian banks have adopted “more conservative positions and higher requirements for collateral than in other jurisdictions” has meant that the crisis has affected Canada “less than most other developed countries.”
According to Court, while some Canadian banks, like other banks in developed countries have had to deal with large “write downs” none has suffered overall losses. Court told guests attending the GCCI Awards ceremony that five Canadian banks are now among the twenty-five largest banks in the world and that international banks elsewhere in the developed world are now moving towards adopting the levels of leverage and the levels of capital requirements currently in place in Canadian banks.
