Countries slow to ratify Cariforum/EU EPA

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad - Political will is needed for all the countries in Cariforum and the European Community to ratify the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), British High Commissioner to T&T Arthur Snell said yesterday. He admitted that implementation of the agreement has “not been...
Read More

The ongoing trade deficit problem for T&T and Jamaica

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados - THE RECURRING challenges of a widening trade deficit for Jamaica with Trinidad and Tobago featured again in the Jamaican senate last Friday but climaxed with an understanding to pursue a non-confrontational strategy for reversal of this lingering negative trend. For all their...
Read More

Caribbean Regional Aid for Trade Strategy launches in Haiti -

Turning market access into market presence What is Aid for Trade? Aid for Trade is a sub-set of official development assistance. In the broadest sense it refers to the flow of development finance/aid from developed countries and multilateral funding agencies to developing countries to enhance their...
Read More

Is CARICOM A Necessity?

KINGSTON, Jamaica - The relationship of Jamaica with its Caribbean neighbours in a regional organisation was first publicly discussed at a conference in Montego Bay in 1947, called by the British secretary of state, Arthur Creech Jones, to discuss the question of regional political integration. Fro...
Read More

CARICOM’s ‘survival’ challenges

KINGSTON, Jamaica - THE first in a series of planned consultations, across this region, for the introduction of a Five-Year Strategic Plan for CARICOM had a low-profile start in Barbados last Wednesday. First official news on the beginning of the consultative process came from the Georgetown-based C...
Read More

Beyond The T&T Smokescreen

KINGSTON, Jamaica - Whatever it is A.J. Nicholson drank last Friday, we hope Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller will insist that he recommend it to Industry Minister Anthony Hylton. The foreign minister, speaking in the Senate, properly dressed down critics of Trinidad and Tobago's trade pract...
Read More

CARICOM worried about OAS budget cuts

GEORGETOWN, Guyana (CMC) — Caribbean Community (Caricom) countries have told the Organisation of America States (OAS) that budget cuts are threatening the provision of scholarships and the activities of OAS national offices in the Caribbean. A Caricom Secretariat statement issued here last Fr...
Read More

IMF was wrong on Greece, what about us?

KINGSTON, Jamaica - It is generally accepted that for small developing countries, like Jamaica, who are in severe economic difficulties, there are few, if any, alternatives to the policy stipulations of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Even traditional political allies such as America, Britai...
Read More

Working group tasked with monitoring FATCA compliance

ST JOHN’S, Antigua – The Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB) has established a working group on the United States Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), the first positive steps taken towards compliance. A press release from the central bank stated that the Eastern Caribbean Curr...
Read More