Canada Will Guarantee Access but CARICOM must Reciprocate

Ambassador Gail Mathurin, Director General in the Office of Trade Negotiations within the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), announced that Canada will guarantee access for CARICOM products and services to its market but insists on reciprocity.

The two sides have just completed the first phase of negotiations for a new trade and development agreement.

While CARICOM has agreed in principle to some kind of reciprocity, regional negotiators are insisting that the level of reciprocity should take into account the disparity in development between CARICOM and Canada and within CARICOM itself. “We don’t see it as reciprocity that will be mirrored exactly on both sides” Ambassador Mathurin said.

Ambassador Mathurin and her team are also hoping that the new arrangements will also provide for an agreement on trade in services.
Under the current CARIBCAN agreement, Caribbean goods have been guaranteed unilateral preferential access to the Canadian market. However, the arrangement is expected to come to an end in 2011 when the current waiver expires.

However, Mathurin said “the level of access that we currently have under CARIBCAN would not be diminished under a trade and development agreement.”

Phase two of the negotiations for the new trade and development agreement is scheduled to bein in Canada in the second half of 2010.