“Small nations, big ambition”: These are the words used by the Chairman of a major European company to describe the recently initialled Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with Europe. While being warm towards the region, he was openly sceptical about whether more than three Caribbean nations would recognise or take advantage in time of the opportunity now presented. He asked which body or bodies existed in the region that were able to rapidly implement so complex an agreement.
In some quarters there is a view that the eleventh hour initialling of the EPA just before Christmas was in some way a great escape. That is to say by avoiding the imposition of European tariffs where none existed before, the region had averted a political and economic crisis and was home and dry.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Any reading of the EPA makes clear that every government and regional institution has little option other than to determine within the three-year preparatory period how they are to foster globally competitive economies and industries.
Attached to the EPA are hundreds of pages of tariff reduction schedules that make clear on a country by country basis that most imports from Europe will gradually cease to be subject to tariffs over the next fifteen years, and that Caribbean manufacturers and importers will either have to become competitive or suffer the consequences of external competition.
Much the same applies in respect of services, where EU firms will increasingly be able to compete directly with a wide range of Caribbean companies providing everything from financial services to ground transport.
Last November, Professor Bishnodat Persaud, one of the region’s internationally respected economists, delivered an address in Mauritius. He spoke in part about trade and competitiveness. He expressed confidence in the future of small island states.
He noted that it had become fashionable to argue that small states were vulnerable and faced considerable disadvantages. While this might have validity in certain respects it was not the whole story. “If a small state provides a space in which competitive returns to capital can be obtained and that small state does its investment promotion, is expeditious in dealing with foreign investors, has a good legal framework and
