Public Consultations on EPAs take place
In 2004, the CARICOM countries and the Dominican Republic, known as CARIFORUM began negotiations with the European Union for an Economic Partnership agreement known as the EPA which replaces the Cotonou Agreement, a treaty between the European Union and the group of African, Caribbean and Pacific countries in June 2000 for development cooperation. After years of back and forth and consultations, on December 2007, the EPA was initialed and on September twelfth it will be signed by most CARICOM countries. But the road to that date has been anything but smooth for several of the countries … and today at the Princess Hotel in Belize City the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade held a public consultation to update our local stakeholders.
Orla Kantun-Coleman, Deputy Dir. Of Foreign Trade
“This divide within the region with Guyana. Guyana has always been saying it’s not in agreement with the text of the Economic Partnership Agreement, but Grenada and St. Lucia have also come out to say they are not going to sign. The other MDC’s of CARICOM, the more developed countries, have said we don’t have a problem, we’ll sign. So we thought that it would be timely for us to have this sort of public consultations where we can provide some details as to the EPA and what we make of the EPA to the stakeholders and then have a response from them in terms of whether they think, what are their concerns, what are their issues and anything that they want to be clarified and their opinion as to whether Belize should sign or not. What we’ve tried to do is to quantify for example the cost of not signing. As I’ve mentioned during the course of an earlier presentation, if you want to quantify that cost, you can look at the exports that we are currently exporting to the EU, the sugar, bananas, the citrus and the shrimp. You are talking of about a total of a hundred and thirty-three million Belize dollars, so if you want to walk away, you are looking at losing a hundred and thirty-three million Belize dollars.”
That one hundred and thirty-three million dollars was more than enough motivation for the Belizean government to go agree to sign, even if there are some shortfalls.
Alexis Rosado, CEO, Ministry of Foreign Affairs
“In order to safeguard the interest of those sectors we need to be a part of an agreement such as the EPA. We believe that it is a fair agreement. It has its pros, it has its cons, but generally it should be good if we are able to take advantage of the opportunities and also prepare for the challenges that lie ahead.”
Kendra Griffith
“What are some of those pros and cons for Belize?”
Orla Kantun-Coleman
“One of them that really stands out is the issue of what we call the most favoured nation treatment. Basically, it speaks to the fact that whenever CARIFORUM engages in a trade partnership arrangement with any other country and it gives better benefit to that any other country CARIFORUM would have to consider extending these better benefits to the European Union. The European Union itself has committed to, if they engage in trade agreement with any other person other than CARIFORUM and they give better benefit to that body or country, they would automatically extend it to the CARIFORUM. We have a fundamental problem with it, even if it is simply from a position of principle in that it’s kinda hard because we are in this continent and this region and our major trading partner is the United States. So obviously, if that is the ceiling that we have with the E.U., then it means we can only give what we give to the E.U. to the US, but it doesn’t work that way, because the U.S. is an entirely different ballgame.”
According to Rosado, the E.U. intends to grant a hundred and sixty-two million dollars in development assistance to the CARIFORUM countries in the next five years.
