CEDA sets up private sector advisory group

CARIBBEAN Export Development Agency (CEDA) is seeking to bring together a regional private sector advisory group that can effectively represent and communicate the concerns of private sector entities in the Caribbean.

Word of this came from that agency’s Executive Director Pamela Coke-Hamilton, as she lamented the alarming disappearance of many such bodies over the last decade. She was at the time addressing delegates attending the Caribbean Exporters’ Colloquium which took place in Barbados last week. Coke-Hamilton said that the lack of strong private sector advocacy left a gaping hole in the Caribbean’s negotiation framework.

The Advisory group which they were putting in place would have “a systemic objective of hearing directly from the private sector of the region, what the key challenges affecting export capacity and marketing penetration were”, the Executive Director reported.

“This conversation will help to create a more targeted approach to enabling the private sector to increase market penetration, particularly under the [EU-CARIFORUM Economic Partnership Agreement].”

Coke-Hamilton said that there was little doubt that opportunities for the region’s exporters were abundant. The challenge was how to improve the tools and capacity of the region’s private sector, identify its area of focus, find out the priority areas for intervention, and be positioned to achieve maximum impact in minimum time.

The Director had earlier suggested that contrary to the region’s poor economic performance being blamed on the financial crisis which turned global in 2008, our problems did not begin then, but even before and was rooted in a systemic weakness in our ability and willingness to adjust to the rapidly changing global environment. Making references to the GATT trade dispute discussions of the early nineties, Coke-Hamilton said that “the requirement of reciprocity is now non-negotiable and the concept of special and differential treatment and proportionality” was no longer receiving the sympathetic hearing that it once did.

“The region, having enjoyed unparalleled access to the most developed markets of the world over four decades, have not been able to use this access to transform our economy and increase our trade performance...” she stated. (RA)