Country of Origin: Jamaica

Mr. Nigel Durrant is the Agricultural Trade Specialist, and Head of the Agricultural Trade Unit in the Office of Trade Negotiation (OTN) of the CARICOM Secretariat, formerly the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery (CRNM).

Mr. Durrant has an intimate knowledge of the Region's agricultural sector and its trade concerns, having spent many years working in this area. Mr. Durrant, who holds a B.Sc. in economics from the University of the West Indies (UWI), and a Masters of Philosophy (M.Phil.) degree from the University of Ife, (now the Obafemi Awolowo University), Nigeria, has been involved in development work for most of his career, primarily relating to agriculture and rural development.

Mr. Durrant has worked with both the Jamaican and Guyanese governments in the area of agricultural planning and policy. He also spent several years at the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat, where he was a senior agricultural economist. At the Ministry of Agriculture in Guyana, where he first worked as a Commonwealth Secretariat expert, Mr. Durrant was responsible for pioneering the focus on international trade negotiations and was appointed as that country’s representative to the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) agriculture negotiations. He was also one of Guyana’s main representatives at meetings of the CARICOM Council on Trade and Economic Development (COTED).

As head of the CRNM’s agricultural programme, and as a member of the region’s FTAA College of Negotiators, Mr. Durrant has participated in most major meetings of the FTAA, several negotiating meetings at the World Trade Organization (WTO), and has been closely involved in the preparatory work for the EU/CARIFORUM Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) negotiations. He served as an Alternate Lead Negotiator for Market Access, with responsibility got Agriculture in the EPA negotiations, which were completed in December 2007.

Since joining the CRNM in 2002, Mr. Durrant has prepared several technical briefs and communications related to the negotiations, and has been a principal resource person in the technical working groups on agriculture and market access.