…EU to launch J$1.4b support programme

(Jamaica Observer) The European Union (EU) will, within the next six months, launch a euro 11.25-million (J$1.4-billion) support programme aimed at enhancing the competitiveness of local exports to the EU market.

The programme is being executed under the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) signed between CARIFORUM (Caricom and the Dominican Republic) and the EU in 2008. The EPA is a reciprocal trade agreement which succeeded the non-reciprocal preferential trade regimes which governed Euro-Caribbean trade for decades.

Under the agreement, the EU allows CARIFORUM duty-free and quota-free access to its market in all goods and services, and in return, Cariforum agreed to open 80 per cent of its market to the Europeans.

“The EPA is a development tool to build regional markets and assist in economic development as a stepping stone towards really participating fully in the global economy,” said Thomas Millar, first secretary and head of the European Commission Delegation to Jamaica’s Economic, Trade, Politics and Information section.

“On the national side, we have been working with the Government and the private sector over the past year, maybe year-and-a-half, on developing an EPA development project for the country itself,” he added.

Millar was part of a group of EC delegates at the Monday Exchange meeting of Observer reporters and editors at the newspaper’s head office in Kingston.

He said the EU, as part of the EPA support project, will provide technicians who will help with market research and the adaptation of Jamaican products to overcome non-tariff barriers to trade in the EU market, such as health and safety, packaging and sanitary requirements, et al — all areas where the standards are very high in the European market.

“It’s aimed at increasing the value and diversity of exports to the EU through identifying, targeting, and removing obstacles to trade wherever we see,” explained Millar. “What we would be able to do with this project is to work with public organisations and selected firms on a demand-driven basis to say to them, ‘Look, we have the systems available for you’… you need to come to us and say (for example), ‘We have these lemons or ginger and we want to access the German or Polish market, which we haven’t been able to do because we can’t reach this standard here, we can’t package this way, etc’.”

According to the Statistical Institute of Jamaica (STATIN), local exports to the EU were worth US$711 million in 2008, making the region one of Jamaica’s most important external markets.

Meanwhile, according to the EU delegates, Jamaica’s implementation programme of the EPA is way ahead of those of its regional partners, who appear to be hesitant in committing to the programme.

In fact, only three countries in CARIFORUM — Jamaica, Barbados and the Dominican Republic — so far even have an EPA implementation unit, and only Jamaica has money in its national allocation for the EPA support project.

“I think clearly there are concerns in the Caribbean — perhaps some of it is the fear of the unknown,” noted Head of Section of the Delegation of the EC to Jamaica, Helen Jenkinson.

“I think long-term it will work out, but it is going to take time, and clearly the EU is behind them,” she added.