Stand on your own

Caribbean business men and women need to get rid of the preferential markets mindset.

This is the belief of Manager, Trade and Export Development at Caribbean Export, David Gomez, who said that some business persons in the region are still longing to go back to the days when the Caribbean had special market access for goods such as bananas.

Manager, Trade and Export Development, Caribbean Export,
David Gomez, speaking at the Training Workshop on ‘The Use
of Intellectual Property as a tool for Business/Export Enhancement’
at the Radisson Aquatica Resort in Barbados recently.

“I think that unfortunately for the Caribbean we have taken way too long to transition out of the period and area when the preferential market access dominated our access into foreign and export markets. What we do find ourselves faced with now is a situation where we are operating in a globally competitive environment where we no longer have the ability to take a product of any quality to market and still receive a premium price on it.”

In an interview with The Grenada Advocate at a recent training workshop on ‘The Use of Intellectual Property as a tool for Business/Export Enhancement’ at the Radisson Aquatica Resort in Barbados, Gomez said that the time has come for business persons to start thinking about how they can enhance their product or service, so that it stands on its own merits instead of simply relying on finding ways of getting preferential market access.

“What we must be able to do now is to trade on the merits of the quality of our own products and services. I think what happens then is that we must find a way to move away from believing that the Economic Partnership Agreement [between the EU and CARIFORUM] is another agreement which provides preferential market access for us. In a sense it does, but in a real sense it doesn’t. What it does is that it provides us with access to a market, but that market is demanding that the products and services that are traded are of global standards, have the DNA to be globally competitive and are of the very highest that the Caribbean can produce,” he explained.

Gomez said that one of the ways that this can be accomplished is by finding creative ways to develop one’s product, so that customers get a different experience using that product compared to competitors’ and he believes that this is something that the people in the region are very capable of achieving.

He observed, “Caribbean people are very creative. We have all come up with our own formulas. We need to understand exactly what it is we are producing and how that can be introduced into the market, how it can be partnered with any other product onto the market. If we are making cheese, are there any particular types of wines also coming out of the region that we can say that this is our wine and cheese tasting that gives you an experience? If we are producing shoes, what are those shoes best used for? If we are producing clothing, what is that clothing best for? The music has always stood on its own, even though we have had significant challenges in capturing the full value of the intellectual property from that music because of licensing and registration of it because of IP, but that is something that we are working on and we would see more successes of in the future.” (PJT)