Too little has been done up to this time to educate the business community and the country as a whole about the proposed Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with Europe and the various ways in which it will impact on the country,” according to President of the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) President Chandradat Chintamani.
“The EPA is a multi-faceted and particularly complex agreement. At the same time, understanding the nature and likely impact of the EPA is critical to the welfare of the business community. The problem is that despite the high-profile nature of the EPA and the amount of discussion that it has generated here in Guyana I am not certain that enough has been done to provide the public with a functional understanding of what the agreement is all about,” Chintamani said.
The GCCI President told Stabroek Business that he had noted that some Caribbean countries, including Trinidad and Tobago, had sought to provide their various publics with a synopsis of the Agreement and assessments “of the specific ways in which it was likely to impact on the Caribbean. He said that the obvious advantage of that approach was that it would enable “more open and vigorous debate on the EPA and would help the respective business communities and other stakeholders in the respective economies in the region to take “informed and objective positions” on the issue.
While acknowledging that there had been a consultative forum involving government officials, including President Bharrat Jagdeo and representatives of the Private Sector, Chintamani said that more work needed to have been done prior to such a forum to ensure that the stakeholders were familiar with the EPA, “I believe that the responsibility lies with the government to take such an initiative,” Chintamani said.
Asked whether the GCCI did not consider itself to have a role in educating its members on the EPA and its implications for Guyana, Chintamani said that said that while he accepted that the Chamber had a role to play in educating its members, the GCCI ”simply lacks the capacity to provide such a service at this time.” He said that while the business community and the various other stakeholders in the economy had embraced the position taken by President Jagdeo on the signing of the EPA, “understanding the EPA and what it means for Guyana in its fullest sense goes far beyond simply expressing support for the position taken by the President.”
