TTMA warns Govt Caricom market remains critical

DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­[email protected]

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) is ex­press­ing hope that po­lit­i­cal de­ci­sions do not hurt trade re­la­tions be­tween lo­cal busi­ness­es and the Cari­com com­mu­ni­ty.

TTMA CEO Dr Mahin­dra Ramdeen made the com­ment yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing me­dia re­ports that Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar in­tends to cut fund­ing to Cari­com, af­ter she ob­ject­ed to the reap­point­ment of Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Dr Car­la Bar­nett.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view, Ramdeen said the TTMA will not en­gage in po­lit­i­cal con­flict but stressed Cari­com’s im­por­tance to the lo­cal econ­o­my, not­ing the re­gion ac­count­ed for an es­ti­mat­ed 80 per cent of T&T’s non-en­er­gy ex­ports.

“The TTMA sees the Cari­com mar­ket as a very im­por­tant one, an in­te­gral mar­ket to­wards our eco­nom­ic sus­tain­abil­i­ty and growth. It rep­re­sents be­tween 70 per cent to 80 per cent of all non-en­er­gy man­u­fac­tur­ing ex­ports. We feel that what­ev­er is be­ing done at any oth­er lev­el, it doesn’t dis­rupt the eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty, the trad­ing ac­tiv­i­ties be­tween the Cari­com pri­vate sec­tor bod­ies. So, we’re gonna con­tin­ue to do all that we can, and we hope that the de­ci­sions tak­en at the po­lit­i­cal lev­el does not neg­a­tive­ly im­pact or cur­tail any of the ex­ist­ing arrange­ment (sic),” Ramdeen said,

He al­so called for deep­er re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion.

“As a mat­ter of fact, we want to see a widen­ing and a deep­en­ing of Cari­com as much as pos­si­ble so Trinidad and To­ba­go busi­ness­es who ex­port in­to the Cari­com re­gion would con­tin­ue to ben­e­fit and those who im­port from with­in Cari­com can ben­e­fit from that process as well.”

How­ev­er, re­gion­al po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Pe­ter Wick­ham char­ac­terised the Prime Min­is­ter’s threats as a dan­ger­ous gam­bit, liken­ing the strat­e­gy to US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s threats against Cana­da, which he la­belled “equal­ly un­wise.”

He warned that with­draw­ing from Cari­com would be a self-in­flict­ed wound with im­me­di­ate con­se­quences.

“If Trinidad and To­ba­go de­cides it wants to with­draw that sup­port, and in­deed if Trinidad and To­ba­go wants to with­draw al­to­geth­er from Cari­com, I think that is some­thing that they will do at their own per­il. The ac­cess that they en­joy to the economies all across the re­gion that are very easy for them to ac­cess, be­cause they’re es­sen­tial­ly just a boat ride away or a plane ride away, all of that changes overnight. And then she will find it is go­ing to be­come an ex­treme­ly chal­leng­ing en­vi­ron­ment in which to op­er­ate and that there are go­ing to be a lot of peo­ple in Trinidad and To­ba­go whose liveli­hood cur­rent­ly de­pends on trade with the re­gion and that will change.”

Wick­ham al­so crit­i­cised the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty’s lack of pub­lic out­rage, point­ing to the risk of los­ing “Most Favoured Na­tion” sta­tus un­der the Re­vised Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas. With­out these pro­tec­tions, T&T goods would lose their com­pet­i­tive edge, po­ten­tial­ly fac­ing tar­iffs and ag­gres­sive com­pe­ti­tion from Latin Amer­i­can pro­duc­ers, he said.

“If it is there are lo­cal sec­tors of the so­ci­ety that are not com­fort­able with this di­rec­tion and be­lieve that ac­tions such as this will not be to their best in­ter­est, then per­haps they’re the peo­ple who need to make a fuss and to make it clear to her that this is high­ly un­wise be­cause there’s no adult su­per­vi­sion in the room. I have not heard any­one with­in her par­ty raise a con­cern about this di­rec­tion,” he added.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les echoed con­cerns about the fall­out, con­demn­ing what she de­scribed as the Prime Min­is­ter’s “rep­re­hen­si­ble at­tack” on Cari­com and crit­i­cism of Dr Bar­nett’s reap­point­ment.

“I com­plete­ly con­demn Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s most re­cent rep­re­hen­si­ble at­tack on the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty, and her lazy, child­ish, and ir­re­spon­si­ble pos­tur­ing on the is­sue of the reap­point­ment of the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al.”

She warned that the move risks re­gion­al back­lash and eco­nom­ic con­se­quences.

“Per­sad-Bisses­sar must be re­mind­ed that Cari­com is the sec­ond-largest mar­ket for our goods and ser­vices, and the re­gion­al back­lash she is invit­ing will on­ly hurt the or­di­nary cit­i­zens and work­ers who are al­ready un­der ex­treme pres­sure due to the poli­cies of her UNC gov­ern­ment. We have had enough.”

But Min­is­ter of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and De­vel­op­ment and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance, Kennedy Swarats­ingh, has sig­nalled a dif­fer­ent ap­proach, telling a TTMA con­fer­ence on Wednes­day that T&T should ex­pand be­yond tra­di­tion­al mar­kets.

“I ac­tu­al­ly look at the geopol­i­tics as an op­por­tu­ni­ty for us to be­gin to ex­plore dif­fer­ent arrange­ments, new arrange­ments, bet­ter arrange­ments... At the end of the day, I think the re­al­i­ty con­tin­ues to be that rather than fo­cus­ing on the things we can’t change, fo­cus on the things we can ef­fect; look for new ways to build up new mar­kets,” Swarats­ingh said.

He said new mar­kets and en­gage­ments will be nec­es­sary, while ac­knowl­edg­ing that sig­nif­i­cant work is still re­quired be­fore the coun­try can com­fort­ably ex­pand its reach.

Calls and mes­sages yes­ter­day to the Prime Min­is­ter, as well as the Min­is­ters of Trade and For­eign Af­fairs, went unan­swered.