http://www.jamaicaobserver.com

Assamba bats for CSME
JIS
Sunday, October 02, 2005

Industry and Tourism, Aloun N'dombet Assamba has told Jamaican manufacturers that with the new and powerful trading blocs in Europe, Asia and the Americas, Jamaica and the rest of the Caribbean had no option but to jointly respond if the region is to survive and compete.
Aloun N'dombet Assamba

Assamba, speaking at the seventh annual Regional Manufacturers' Associations meeting in Kingston on Thursday, said that the process of globalisation was changing the world so rapidly that it demanded the Caribbean to quickly implement the provisions for economic and financial harmonisation and outlined in the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas. The revised treaty establishes the basis for the Caricom Single Market and Economy (CSME).

"The implementation of the provisions for economic, financial harmonisation and co-operation as outlined in the Treaty lends itself to the fostering of an entirely new partnership relationship among the regional private sector, labour movement, the institutions of civil society, tertiary institutions, and respective governments," Assamba said.

Quoting one of the provisions of the Treaty, the minister pointed out that: "The Community shall pursue the negotiation of external trade and economic agreements on a joint basis."

The Revised Treaty, the single market and other Caribbean regional agreements therefore, represented the region's core strategy to meet the challenges of globalisation and to facilitate the economic and social development of member states, she said.

"The economic integration as contemplated by the CSME will afford the region the benefits of greater critical mass with consequential benefits of pooled resources, an expanded market of approximately 15 million persons as well as access to inflows of new capital, entrepreneurship and technology in the form of new businesses, acquisitions and joint ventures," Assamba said.

Assamba said that with the full implementation of the CSME, the capability of firms across the region to recruit skilled workers would be enhanced. Enhanced regional competition and harmonised standards would reduce instances of unfair distribution and pricing, she said.

Said Assamba: "Too much is at stake for the region's productive and export sectors to not collaborate and maintain strong partnerships in order to bring greater certainty and transparency in the rules governing trade, and to ensure that the developmental objectives for the competitiveness of our economies are realised.

"We must put regional rivalries aside and embrace the opportunities that are offered with geographic concentration of our productive enterprise and take advantage of our deep cultural and historic linkages.

As a bloc, we have a basis for stronger and more effective negotiating and lobbying force than individual territories acting on their own."
This approach, she said, had helped the region to win recognition of important principles, such as the need for special attention to the situation of smaller economies in the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and the recently concluded Fifth World Trade Organisation (WTO) Ministerial Conference.

"The fact is, in a region where resources are limited, the benefits of pooling efforts cannot be overstated. It is in this context that the theme of the meeting: 'The Importance of Co-operation for Enhanced Trade in the Region', resonates," the minister said.

She said that it was a well-known strategy in international relations, that weaker nations moved to take positions on a group basis that they would be "hard pressed" to do individually.

"This is clear in our Caricom trade approach. Unity is strength, especially when deepened by alliances with others. On our own, it is impossible to cover the various negotiating theatres effectively," Assamba said.

However, as a group, Caricom can attempt to do more," she said, pointing out that the FTAA working groups provided a clear example where instead of fielding national representatives for every group, regional states relied heavily on regional-led representation.
"The regional and collaborative approach to shaping international trade and our international negotiating agenda is therefore not a choice, it is an imperative," she said.