CARICOM outlines rules for competition
With Belize’s geographic and ethnic spilt personality, it’s sometimes hard to remember whether we are Central American or Caribbean…or if we watch enough cable TV, whether we are just another corner of the U.S.A. Institutionally, however, our membership in the Caribbean Community is strong…and as CARICOM promotes greater regional integration we ignore those developments at our peril. News Five’s Kendra Griffith reports on how the sometimes complicated process will affect us in the future.
Kendra Griffith, Reporting
Members of the CARICOM Secretariat and the Fair Trading Commission of Barbados are in Belize for two days to hold sensitization workshops on revisions to the Treaty of Chaguaramas.
Elma Gene Isaac, Sr. Legal Officer, CARICOM Secretariat
“The idea is to get persons familiar with the provisions of chapter eight of the revised treaty, which deals with competition and the second part of what we are doing is to work with your attorney general’s chambers to ensure that work is in progress on the competition legislation and later on the establishment of your national competition authority.”
According to Sr. Legal Officer of the CARICOM Secretariat, Elma Gene Isaac, the national competition authority will be responsible for investigating allegations of anti-competitive business conduct and cooperate with the Community Competition Commission and other national authorities.
Richard Reid, Sr. Trade Economist, Min. of Foreign Affairs
“We want competition to be to the maximum possible. We don’t want that the benefits of integration to be frustrated just by people or businesses doing things that are not the type of conduct that would really foster competition. We need rules of competition to be put in place and enforced by law so that everybody will feel that they have an equal chance of succeeding.”
Richard Reid is Senior Trade Economist in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Belize’s point man on the issue.
Richard Reid
“We are at the stage where we already have a draft model legislation where we really need to make the necessary adjustments to that and then pass it through the legislature. And I think at that point then it’s a matter of deciding what the national competition authority will be like, drawing on the experiences of others, I would say, CARICOM and international.”
Elma Gene Isaac
“The legislation is necessary because you see you are asking, you are encouraging businesses, you are encouraging enterprises to grow. You want them to be competitive internationally, both within the national jurisdiction region and within the regional jurisdiction, but also you want them to become more competitive internationally. We have within the revised treaty a right of establishment, enterprises can move, say from Belize to Barbados to St. Lucia, set up shop and compete within those other member states.”
With a membership of more than three hundred business, the Belize Chamber of Commerce and Industry is welcoming the soon-to-be implemented legislation.
Omar Ortiz, Business Dev. Mgr. Belize Chamber of Commerce
“As a country we’ve been clamouring for competition law and equitable treatment within the CSME as it relates to trade for private individuals in the line of commerce, especially in the agro-business sector and other sectors in which we do export to CARICOM as a region.”
“Belize has been exporting red kidney beans to different islands in the past and in some instances there has been blockages and people have not been allowed to freely export their beans because there is not the effective competition policy and laws in place within these countries to ensure that our beans can in fact enter those markets and are traded and treated the same as any other bean product from any other country.”
In the two days the facilitators are hoping to reach at least fifty members of the private sector, civil society, educational institutions, and state agencies and regulators to inform them of the CSME initiative.
Elma Gene Isaac
“The member states are required to ensure that information is disseminated to all the stakeholders, consumers and enterprises competing in the market. So the national commission is critical in that respect.”
One of those stakeholders is Otto Friesen, General Manager of Bel-Car Export and Import, whose company has been moving beans throughout the Caribbean for fifteen years.
Otto Friesen, G.M., Bel-Car Export and Import
“The reason for my coming to the workshop is just to get informed because basically it is the first time that I was hearing about this issue.”
“I don’t know if I understand all of it, but why I think it is necessary is so that big conglomerates don’t eat the small—well there is a saying that goes big fish eat small fish.”
Richard Reid
“We are looking at getting key sectors oriented and, I would say, alerted to what they must expect. We cannot reach everybody at this point, not in just two days, but that really argues that we need some other follow-up programme to get a public education system running.”
Tomorrow the team heads to Belmopan to update the government sector. Kendra Griffith reporting for News Five.
The original Treaty establishing CARICOM was signed in 1973 in Chaguaramas, Trinidad and Tobago. The Caribbean Community includes fifteen member states and five associate members. All are former or current British colonies, with the exception of Haiti and Suriname.
