KINGSTON, Jamaica (CMC):

Prime Minister Bruce Golding says the signing of the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between member states of CARIFORUM and the European Union will not take place as scheduled in April.

But Golding, who has lead responsibility for external trade negotiations in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), said he remained confident that the agreement would be signed within the time allowed under the accord.

"The original thinking was to have the signing done in the middle of April, but for a number of reasons, including the time that needs to be allowed for individual member states to carefully examine the text of the agreement and also recognising the fact that there have been two changes of government since the start of this year, it was felt that it was necessary for new governments to advise themselves properly before committing signatures to the agreement," Golding said.

Deadline

"We have up until the end of June to sign the agreement formally and I'm confident that all the countries will be able to complete their own review of the text in order to meet that deadline. So it is anticipated certainly that the agreement will be signed sometime before the end of June."

Trade negotiators from CARIFORUM (CARICOM and the Dominican Republic) and the European Union had reached agreement on the EPA in time for the December 31, 2007, deadline.

The EPA will replace a special export regime for several economically critical goods, excluding sugar and rice, from the African Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries that had been in place since the mid-1970s.

The ACP has been operating under a special seven-year waiver from World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules that expired at the end of last year and countries that failed to complete new EPAs in time were warned that they could face higher tariffs on goods exported to Europe.

Under the new agreement, the Caribbean will now have to open nearly 90 per cent of its market to duty-free imports from the EU on a phased basis over the next 25 years.

The new accord calls for 82.7 per cent of the market to be liberalised in the first 15 years and a moratorium of three years on all tariffs except those on motor vehicles, spare parts and gasolene coming into the region. Other duties and charges are to be kept during the first seven years and then phased out in the following three years.

More time needed

Golding said he and his CARICOM colleagues at their just-concluded 19th Intersessional summit in The Bahamas had discussed the EPA with regional leaders who had indicated that more time was needed before countries inked the agreement.

"We have had, for example, to seek to have the text translated for Haiti, and it is 400 pages of text and another 600 pages of annexes that have to be dealt with, so there's a time that has to be allowed for each country to go through the text to satisfy themselves that the commitments there are in accordance with what they had mandated and what they had indicated a willingness to accept," Golding said.

"Some of our countries, for example, want to have discussions in their parliament. I've instructed my own foreign minister to make arrangements to have the text made available to parliament so that if a discussion in parliament is sought that it can be entertained."

CARIFORUM, which comprises the CARICOM countries and the Dominican Republic, has secured a development component in the EPA which Golding said would help these countries to improve their capacity and productive efficiency.

"I am hoping that Caribbean governments recognise that this is not money to catch up with the backlog of things that we were not able to do because we could not find the money," Golding said.

"This money really is intended to build our institutional capacity to be world class and to be competitive and that is what we need to do."

The prime minister said he was mindful of the fact that Caribbean countries have entered trade agreements before, including CARIBCAN and the Caribbean Basin Initiative that offered tremendous opportunities.

But Golding warned his colleagues that they should not repeat past situations where regional countries did not take full advantage of the agreements.

"We need to be among the best in the world because we live in a world, we no longer live in a little region called the Caribbean, we are part of a much bigger hemisphere and therefore we need to get busy."