Opposition warns CARICOM row could cost economy billions

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les has is­sued a sharp warn­ing that Trinidad and To­ba­go risks putting its econ­o­my un­der se­vere strain if ten­sions with CARI­COM con­tin­ue, claim­ing the coun­try could lose ac­cess to rough­ly $7.5 bil­lion in an­nu­al trade ben­e­fits.

In a state­ment, Beck­les crit­i­cised Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and her ad­min­is­tra­tion, ac­cus­ing them of poor diplo­ma­cy and what she de­scribed as a pat­tern of con­fronta­tion with re­gion­al part­ners.

She ar­gued that trade with­in CARI­COM re­mains a crit­i­cal pil­lar of the econ­o­my, sup­port­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers, ex­porters, small busi­ness­es, and pub­lic ser­vices, and warned any dis­rup­tion could trig­ger wide­spread fall­out across sec­tors.

Beck­les al­so linked the cur­rent diplo­mat­ic ten­sions to re­cent re­gion­al dis­putes, in­clud­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ab­sence from key CARI­COM meet­ings, sug­gest­ing the gov­ern­ment’s pos­ture risks iso­lat­ing the coun­try at a time of eco­nom­ic pres­sure.

The state­ment fur­ther ac­cused the ad­min­is­tra­tion of in­con­sis­ten­cy in for­eign pol­i­cy and crit­i­cised its han­dling of re­la­tions with­in the re­gion, ar­gu­ing that de­ci­sions tak­en by the gov­ern­ment could weak­en co­op­er­a­tion mech­a­nisms built over decades.

She said the stakes go be­yond pol­i­tics, fram­ing CARI­COM par­tic­i­pa­tion as es­sen­tial to jobs, in­vest­ment, and re­gion­al sta­bil­i­ty, and urged the gov­ern­ment to re­con­sid­er its ap­proach be­fore eco­nom­ic con­se­quences deep­en.