The portents arising out of the late September meeting between Guyana and Trinidad & Tobago to discuss the twin-island Republic’s generally inhospitable posture towards the importation of a range of goods from Guyana are not particularly encouraging, at least not as things stand at this time.
The meeting itself came without a great deal of public warning even though one assumes that it must have arisen out of some measure of bilateral discourse at the level of the two governments, though it is hard to overlook the fact that it materialised after a protracted period of virtually ceaseless protestations from Guyanese businesses that had borne the brunt of Trinidad & Tobago’s persistent pushback against their efforts to establish some kind of bridgehead access to markets in that country.
All of this, mind you, has come in the face of what has long been a demonstrable preparedness on the part of Guyana to open its doors to products from Trinidad and Tobago, which have come, in large measure, in the form of the wholesale importation into Guyana of a bewildering array of manufactured goods, not least beverages, condiments and snack foods. Some of these have even provided considerable competition for businesses in the local agro-processing industry, over which there has been some measure of murmuring without any attendant ‘song and dance.’ All of this has been taking place against the backdrop of persistent bilateral flare-ups arising out the deliberate efforts on the part of Port of Spain to block a range of goods from Guyana including, fish, fresh vegetables and manufactured condiments from being sold in Trinidad and Tobago.
Guyana, presumably out of sense of loyalty to the single market philosophy that is one of the underpinnings of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) has, officially at least, made no public fuss over the status quo. So to the Friday September 13 meeting, the timing of which is, in itself, interesting.
Trinidad and Tobago, after all, is clearly not indifferent to the business opportunities in Guyana that derive from the country’s emerging oil and gas industry and would, one assumes, have calculated that this is as good a time as any to change its protectionist ways in the matter of market access for products from Guyana, hence the emergence of a document which appears to have derived from the meeting, itemizing steps that have to be taken, virtually all of them by Guyana in the first instance, in order to resolve their differences on the question of the squeeze on imports from Guyana into Trinidad and Tobago.
Two questions arise at this juncture. The first has to do with the timing of the meeting and the circumstances under which it was convened. An opening of the Trinidad and Tobago market to imports from Guyana would clearly be of some benefit to the various sectors of the Guyana economy, agriculture and agro-processing being among them. On the other hand it is Trinidad and Tobago that clearly stands to gain most from its geo-political position close to a CARICOM sister country with a huge emerging oil and gas industry. The second question has to do with the list of requirements outlined in the ‘communique’ which Guyana is now required to fulfil in order to secure market access. Since most of these are procedural in nature the mind boggles as to why they had not been dealt with long before now and why, particularly at this juncture, Trinidad and Tobago is quite prepared to deal with these issues now. Indeed, careful perusal of the document readily reveals that, in the main, the onus is clearly on Guyana to immerse itself mostly in initiating correspondence with various state agencies in Trinidad and Tobago making various cases for creating an enabling environment for an improved relationship insofar as placing certain locally produced goods on the correct footing to allow for access to the Trinidad and Tobago market.
On the whole, the document bears a suspicious resemblance to elements of a communique arising out of a diplomatic discourse that goes to some trouble to avoid going down the road of Trinidad and Tobago’s long-standing protectionist posture.
Some of the outcomes that will have to arise from the issues itemized in the communique will have to involve CARICOM machinery which can be ponderous in its proceedings, a circumstance that is not to Guyana’s advantage; so that it is not altogether out of place to raise the issue as to whether, even in the face of the September 13 meeting and its outcomes, Guyana may still not be on a proverbial hiding to nowhere insofar as greater access to markets in Trinidad and Tobago is concerned.