1. Ramesh Ramdeen Trinidad and Tobago How to overcome barriers to MSME Trade in the Region.

2. What is to be covered Tariff Barriers Vs Non Tariff Barriers.
What theory says about barriers to trade regionally.
What is the practice; why it exists?
Measures to over come barriers to trade.

3. Tariff regime in region
What is a Tariff – Duties at the border, specific and AV.
Common External Tariffs – common market regime.
WTO obligations – Bound rates vs applied rates – outliers
Article 164 – OECS.
Bahamas – special case.
External trade agreements frameworks.

4. Non-tariff measures in Region
Packaging/labelling Requirements
Standards – health/safety requirements
ODTs
SPS
Registration
Licensing
Rules of Origin
Laws – AD and Law 173.
Quotas
Government policies and requirements

5. Why Barriers to Trade exist – defensive vs offensive
Defensive barriers safeguard industries, workers, special interest groups, protect infant industries and promote national security (export controls).
Offensive barriers pursue a strategic or public policy objective, such as increasing employment or generating taxes.

6. Are barriers to trade ideal?
What about Manufactures offensive position and needs?
Is keeping out the competition a bad thing?
Are consumers better off, are workers better off?
Is society better off?

7. Addressing barriers to Trade
Education – understand what is needed wrt to importation requirements e.g. documents required, samples required, tests needed to be conducted on imported samples etc.). Thus, information dissemination on importation requirements is critical (N.B. There are instances where even the importer is unaware of the importation requirements, in addition to the exporter).

8. Addressing barriers to Trade
Harmonisation of standards – this removes the possibility for countries to have different requirements for products. CROSQ has already developed several regional standards across various sectors (food and beverage, chemicals, packaging etc), but the various countries are yet to adopt these standards.
Make CROSQ Standards mandatory?

9. Addressing barriers to Trade
Need for meaningful dialogue among border agencies within region. It is important for the regulatory agencies (bureau of standards, food and drugs division, Chief Veterinary Officers etc) to discuss ways in improving the trade environment while maintaining their respective mandates (i.e. to protect animal, plant and human health, as per the TBT and SPS agreements). The framework exists in CARICOM (e.g. CVOs do meet regularly, and CROSQ does facilitate the meeting of regional Bureaux of Standards), but the results are not being seen (hence the lack of harmonisation in standards throughout the region).
Customs must be more trade facilitating that revenue generation

10. Addressing barriers to trade
Change to legislation which (unjustifiably) prohibits imports (N.B. Trinidad and Tobago falls into this category re: honey, importation of duck meat from suriname)
SPS issues – TT food import bill
Importation of meats.

11. Addressing Trade barriers
Be the agent of change
Get your BSOs on board.
Need to have optimal representation for the private sector in the region
Remove the political ineptitude from the process.
Make CSME optimal – lobbying efforts