A senior official in the local Ministry of Agriculture has gone on the attack against non-tariff barriers instituted by some Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries that are working counter to efforts to realise regional food security, according to Monday’s edition of the Jamaica Gleaner.
The Gleaner reported Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture here George Jervis as alluding to “the arbitrary use, as well as abuse, of non-tariff barriers as a major hindrance to the growth of intraregional trade.” He was speaking at Jamaica’s Denbigh Show- the country’s largest agriculture industrial and food show. “Jervis thinks the time has come for these and other barriers to be reviewed with the goal of dismantling them in the interest of regional economic development,” the Gleaner reported.
“Those will have to be addressed, and you have to look at the reasons given for preventing intra-Caribbean trade while, at the same time, facilitating trade from extra-Caribbean sources,” Jervis was quoted as saying.
Jervis, the Gleaner said, cited the example of discriminatory extra-regional poultry imports by some CARICOM countries which injure the export markets of other countries in the region, advancing as justification, sanitary which are not given for countries which, in fact, have bird flu.
Jervis, according to the Gleaner, said that there are countries from the developed world where bird flu has been detected but which are still exporting poultry to the region while, on the other hand, Caribbean states are asking their neighbours which have no record of the dreaded disease to meet certain requirements which then make it impractical to do business.
