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Trade Minister Ken Valley’s assertion that he was very comfortable that Trinidad and Tobago would be chosen as the headquarters of the soon to be established Free Trade Area of the Americas is heartening.

However, the country would be just as comfortable as Valley is on the question of the FTAA headquarters being sited here, should the Trade Minister be in a position to advise that special arrangements were being sought for the retention of tariffs by Trinidad and Tobago and other Caricom States, even for a limited specified period, for the protection of our manufacturing and agricultural industries.

The economies of most Caricom economies, with the exception of that of Trinidad and Tobago, are relatively fragile. Even Jamaica’s economy, which had been buoyed from the early 1990s through initiatives of its Government’s Financial Sector Adjustment Company, which had encouraged strategic investments by TT companies, including Guardian Holdings Limited, Trinidad Cement Limited among others, has begun to fall back.

Jamaica’s Grace, Kennedy and Company had also made a critical contribution to the country’s 1990s economic upturn. The 1990s and the first two years of the 21st century had seen both upswings and downturns in other Caricom economies, particularly those whose understandable emphasis on tourism, for example Barbados and St Lucia, had made them vulnerable to external factors beyond their control, such as slides in European and North American economies.

In turn, hurricanes impacted adversely on agriculture, particularly the banana industry, as did damage to the infrastructure of several of the islands, all of which remain at risk to hurricane damage. The around the corner end of the Convention of Lome, under which ACP countries export sugar via a preferential entry quota to the European Union, has been partly responsible for the recent closure by the Trinidad and Tobago Government of Caroni (1975) Limited and the consequent loss of some 10,000 jobs.

Banana producing Caricom countries have already had their exports of bananas to the EU, again under a preferential entry quota system, placed under siege by the United States of America, the FTAA’s author and protagonist! But should the English speaking Caribbean be able to win a respite for its tariffs, there still remain two crucial requirements for the island States — a modified FTAA Structural Adjustment Programme and the instituting of a policy by the FTAA that would disallow tacit dumping in Caricom States by its larger and more economically powerful members.

There are undoubtedly benefits to Trinidad and Tobago through the siting of the headquarters of the Free Trade Area of the Americas here. Millions of dollars will flow into the economy, what with the staffing of the headquarters here, resulting in additional purchases of food, stationery, beverages, payments for electricity, water, rents for housing accommodation, transport, fuel and what have you. The regular visits of diplomats and other personnel to the FTAA will also help stimulate the Trinidad and Tobago economy. But the minuses must also be advanced alongside of the plusses and forceful arguments put forward by the leaders of the Caribbean Community of Nations to ensure a guaranteed period of at least relative economic security for the Region.