David Jessop, Contributor

For much of the last week, I have been speaking to smaller Caribbean companies about the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with Europe.

What they told me was far removed from the often personal and acrimonious public debate that is taking place between those who informed or approved the strategic direction of the negotiating process.

Those that I met were not the companies that are invested inter-regionally or overseas.

Rather, they were the businessmen and women who run the enterprises that are the life blood of most Caribbean economies: the manufacturers, the small-hotel owners and the producers of fruit and vegetables for the export market.

Man and woman were perplexed and unsure of what the EPA might mean for their businesses.

In some cases, they had attended the stakeholders' meetings that had been organised across the region during the negotiations.

Others had been present at the few government-led meetings that had been held in the Caribbean since the text was initialled last December.

Since then, the public debate had begun to alarm them because they were unable to check the final document and its schedules to ascertain what the EPA meant for them.

In these conversations, a number of issues emerged that point less to fundamental opposition and more the absence of user-friendly information so that they could relate what had been negotiated to their bottom line.

In essence, their concerns fell into four areas.

The first was the absence of the final text. In every single conversation what was clear was that none of my interlocutors had seen or read the all-important tariff-reduction schedules that instantly make clear whether a European product is excluded, subject to gradually reducing tariffs and over what period this will happen.

In the case of services, what emerged was that the few who had seen the schedules found them utterly incomprehensible as they are written in the language of trade and the World Trade Organisation's four modes of services activity.

Lack of awareness

For this reason, there was an almost universal lack of awareness that most Caribbean governments had entered many protective caveats or restrictions ranging from the continuing requirement for work permits and licensing to more general restrictions on EU companies being given the same treatment as indigenous companies.

Second, there was a sense that some governments and public sector entities were reluctant to share the information that they had.

This was part of a much broader concern about the ethos of the Caribbean public sector and a belief in the civil service, it was suggested, that restricting information equated to power.

This was coupled with the more specific view that because the public sector did not understand the ways in which business operated and how profit was intimately linked to funding the national economy and to social objectives, many in the public sector had not yet grasped what they must do with respect to the EPA.

That is to say that much of the public sector had not comprehended that the EPA would require them to become enablers if business was to flourish and that they would have less of a commanding role in the direction of the economy.

As such, this would place a heavy burden on them to provide information and make transparent and timely decisions.

Third, there was a deep concern, verging on anger, about the ability of the European Commission (EC) and its representatives to deliver development assistance to the private sector.

Thus, there was deep concern as to whether business could develop the standards, inter-connectivity or the many other areas of support promised in the text of the EPA to achieve international competitiveness.

Funding virtually inaccessible

In this context, nothing had angered the private sector associations and individual companies more than the boasts made in 2007 by EC Development Com-missioner Louis Michel that there would be €1 billion of support for the EPAs.

Those I spoke with noted that EC funding for the private sector is virtually inaccessible, the European Development Fund has bureaucratic processes worse than any in the Caribbean, and that its support seemed largely to exist to fund European consultants.

My interlocutors' concern was that even modest levels of support could not be delivered by the European system in the time scale in which change has to occur, not least because it was always accompanied by rules that were at odds with individual corporate success.

As a consequence, there was a deep cynicism about the real meaning of the EPA and about Europe, and a sense that Caribbean companies would have to face the full force of competition by diverting their own resources.

Uncertainty

And finally and more generally - perhaps because few had seen the schedules - there was uncertainty about when change would occur or how much time might be available in which to adapt.

There were also worries about the continuing existence of European non-tariff barriers that it was felt would enable the European Union's regulatory authorities to deny entry to Caribbean foodstuffs despite the promise of free access.

And there was concern about what the EPA said on rules of origin.

This was because manufacturing companies around the region were increasingly sourcing raw materials from many parts of the world and from Europe, before processing or using them in a manufacturing process for shipping them on to the US, Canada and Europe as finished products.

What all of this suggested to me was not a Caribbean private sector seething with anger about the EPA, as some within and beyond the region are suggesting, but one with desire to understand and adapt if accurate and detailed information can be made available by tariff line.

Recognised body needed

What was said also illustrated clearly the pressing need for a formally recognised body standing between Caricom and the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery that is able to analyse and disseminate detailed infor-mation electronically to the whole private sector.

Two simple, immediate and practical way of addressing concerns about the EPA would be for the production of an electronic summary by country and sector of what it means, and the establishment of a virtual centre where manufacturers and others can explore the schedules by tariff line of by the area of services activity.

All of which is to say nothing of the pressing importance of Caribbean governments and private enterprise beginning to think laterally about exploring new investment opportunities in non- traditional sectors and with non- traditional partners in Europe in the three years before implementation begins.

David Jessop is director of the Caribbean Council. Email: david.jessop@caribbean-council.org