CARIBBEAN AIRWAVES BACK ON THE 'TRADEBEAT'

Caribbean TradeBeat Extra gets the facts on the CARIFORUM-EC EPA. Caribbean TradeBeat Extra is part of a region-wide campaign to pass accurate, credible information on the EPA to entrepreneurs and traders, and the general public.  Each week on Caribbean TradeBeat Extra, listen for how you and your business, irrespective of size, can play your part in fusing the kind of trade momentum that would redound to the benefit of not only the regional private sector but also see a trickle-down effect to the wider populace.

Caribbean TradeBeat Extra - the CRNM's radio series - again takes to the airwaves as part of a region-wide campaign to explain how the European Union Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) will benefit the region's businesses and economies.

Caribbean TradeBeat Extra is a follow-up to the original Caribbean TradeBeat series of 108 ten-minute radio shows produced  between 2005 and 2007.

Supported by the Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF) of the Inter-American Development Bank, (IDB) Caribbean TradeBeat Extra continues the CRNM's work towards creating awareness and strengthening the private sector's role in the CARICOM External Trade Negotiations.  

Listeners will be able follow the highlight of the agreement to be signed in early September by Caribbean leaders. The CRNM's trade negotiators and advisers in the main negotiating theatres have been working with the region's private sector to carve out a unique economic partnership deal with European Union that spurs Caribbean growth and competitiveness while taking into account the special and differential status of regional economies.

"We have, if you want, the most generous agreement that exists on this Earth in terms of what we have to give in return," says the CRNM's Director General Henry Gill, in an interview with presenter/producer Julius Gittens on the first edition of the programme. "We are able to exclude, first of all, a large number of products that are our most sensitive products. Gill will explain how the CARIFORUM stands alone as the region to complete negotiations towards creating a new EPA, thus avoiding a rash of duties that were set to take effect in 2009. "In the case of the CARICOM MDCS, 15 per cent of our imports, on average, are excluded entirely. In the CARICOM LDCs, 30 per cent of their imports are excluded entirely…. This is quite unique," Gills adds.

Caribbean TradeBeat Extra is part of a region-wide campaign to pass accurate, credible information on the EPA to entrepreneurs and traders, and the general public.

Industry leaders in the major export communities, such as sugar, rice, bananas and rum are scheduled to appear on the radio programme to brief listeners on the benefits their industries are deriving from the EPA.

Each week on Caribbean TradeBeat Extra, listen for how you and your business, irrespective of size, can play your part in fusing the kind of trade momentum that would redound to the benefit of not only the regional private sector but also see a trickle-down effect to the wider populace. With the greater market access afforded the region by the EPA, the Caribbean is expected to realize the development of innovative, sunrise industries and services.

"We are gaining secure access to what is in fact the largest market in the world, for all of our exports across the board … on a duty-free, quota-free access  forever so that is a big gain," says CRNM Director General Henry Gill. Two Caribbean commodities, sugar and rice, will gain full access to European markets after two years.

 CaribbeanTrade Beat Extra expects to get the facts on the economic partnership agreement, as it asks whether this means boon or bust for Caribbean business.

Listeners can follow the programme on eleven stations in ten Caribbean nations:

They can also download a podcast of Caribbean TradeBeat Extra from the website, http://caribbeantradebeat.mypodcast.com and via the CRNM's website, http://www.crnm.org.

DATE: Monday August 25

EPISODE: #2008-01. A new era begins: The EPA

In the first programme of a new CRNM series, Caribbean TradeBeat EXTRA, Henry Gill, the director general of the CRNM, details key features of an economic partnership agreement, thought to be the best vehicle for a more reciprocal trade between Europe and African, Caribbean and Pacific groups. The EPA is the climax of a story that began as far back as 2004, when talks began on a replacement for the Cotonou trade and aid agreement, itself the successor to the Lome agreement.

DATE: Tuesday August 26

EPISODE: #2008-02. Five Olympic Lessons for Caribbean global competiveness

In the second programme of a new CRNM series, Caribbean TradeBeat EXTRA, Grace Jackson, 1988 Olympic silver medal sprinter and Jamaican sports administrator, shares five lessons from the rise of Jamaica and the Caribbean as a world-beater in athletics; lessons in building international competitiveness that are already incorporated in the new economic partnership agreement between the Caribbean and the European Union.

DATE: Wednesday August 26

EPISODE: #2008-03. A new 'sweetener' for Caribbean sugar's future

FOR BROADCAST: Wednesday, August 27. In the third programme of a new CRNM series, Caribbean TradeBeat EXTRA, we examine the likely impact of the new economic partnership agreement between the Caribbean and the European Union on the region's key export industries. Does the EPA offer the region a sweeter deal for moving from an historic primary product - raw sugar - to a Caribbean-branded, value-added future? One of the region's sugar industry leaders, Ambassador Deryck Heaven, executive chairman of the Sugar Authority of Jamaica, reveals how four years of negotiating and private sector input have reaped rewards, as an old accord gives way to a new business venture.

DATE: Thursday August 28

EPISODE: #2008-04. "Yes, we have no bananas": The Caribbean and the EPA

FOR BROADCAST: Thursday, August 28. In the fourth programme of a new CRNM series, Caribbean TradeBeat EXTRA, we examine the likely impact of the new economic partnership agreement between the Caribbean and the European Union on the region's key export industries. "Yes, we have no bananas" could sum up the future of the Caribbean banana industry but the EPA offers a way out of a tortured history of relentless challenges by larger Latin American nations, intent on eroding the Caribbean's market share and competitiveness. Dr. Marshall Hall, shareholder and former managing director of the Jamaica's largest banana exporter, Jamaica's Producer's Group, explains.

DATE: Friday August 29

EPISODE: #2008-05. At your service: The EPA and the Caribbean Services Economy

FOR BROADCAST: Friday, August 29. In the fifth programme of a new 13-part CRNM series, Caribbean TradeBeat EXTRA, we examine the likely impact of the new economic partnership agreement between the Caribbean and the European Union on the region's key export industries. As the Caribbean continues to earn more from what we do than and how we serve than what we make, we hear from services trade expert Larry Placide on the purpose and the promise of a new economic partnership agreement for trade in services.

DATE: Monday, September 01

EPISODE: #2008-06. Caribbean hospitality and the EPA

FOR BROADCAST: Monday, September 01. Amid rising fuel costs and shrinking airlift into the Caribbean, the region's hospitality industry is keen to take advantage of the new Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), to be signed between the Caribbean and the European Union. Alec Sanguinetti, head of the Caribbean Hotel Association, spells out some of the EPA's many benefits to the hotel industry that he expects will give it additional leverage in becoming globally competitive.

DATE: Tuesday, September 02

EPISODE: #2008-07. Farming a good deal out of the EPA - part one of two

FOR BROADCAST: Tuesday, September 02. The rice farmer and the trade negotiator look ahead to the future of a Caribbean export and global staple under a new economic partnership agreement with the European Union. Were farmers consulted in the negotiations? And did they get what they wanted from the deal? Taking part: Dharamkumar Seeraj, general secretary of the Guyana Rice Producers' Association and Nigel Durrant, the CRNM's agriculture trade specialist. Part one of two.

DATE: Wednesday, September 03

EPISODE: #2008-08. Farming a good deal out of the EPA - part two of two

FOR BROADCAST: Wednesday, September 03. In the second of a two-part discussion on agriculture, the rice farmer and the trade negotiator look ahead to the future of a Caribbean export and global staple under a new economic partnership agreement with the European Union. What safeguards did the rice farmers get? And how will they cope with other economic partnership agreements that Brussels intends to initial with other global rice producers? Part two of two. 

DATE: Thursday, September 04

EPISODE: #2008-09. Bumper Crop from EPA for Eastern Caribbean farming?

FOR BROADCAST: Thursday, September 04. As the private sector continues to have its say on what a new economic partnership agreement between the Caribbean and the European Union will do for a key export business, Bernard Cornibert, the head of the Windward Islands banana marketing company, WIBDECO, says it's high time for the region to become more productive and competitive. Can the EPA help? 

DATE: Friday, September 05

EPISODE: #2008-10. Small business, big role in Caribbean EPA

FOR BROADCAST: Friday, September 05. The president of Caribbean Association of Small and Medium Enterprises, Sandra Husbands, who also leads the Barbados Small Business Association, opens her crystal ball on the fate of small business in the coming era of economic partnership with the European Union, and sees bright opportunities in Caribbean niche goods and services for European consumers.

DATE: Monday, September 08

EPISODE: #2008-11. EPA to set standards for Caribbean's world of work

FOR BROADCAST: Monday, September 08. From his vantage point in both Paramaribo and the Caribbean capitals he's travelled to as head of the Caribbean Employers Confederation, Marcel Meyer sees the EU-CARIFORUM economic partnership agreement more as a labour standards contract between Europe and its former colonies than as a strict trade deal. The EPA succeeds the Cotonou Agreement, whose development agenda focussed on the rights of Caribbean people to decent work.

DATE: Tuesday, September 09

EPISODE: #2008-12. EPA to set standards for Caribbean's world of work

FOR BROADCAST: Tuesday, September 09. Highlights of the presentation by the director general of the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery, Henry Gill, at Guyana's national consultation on the EPA, as the business, labour and NGO community, together with the Bharrat Jagdeo administration hear the case for the Caribbean's entry into economic partnership with the European Union.

DATE: Wednesday, September 10

EPISODE: #2008-13. The 'last word' on the EPA (FINAL EPISODE)

FOR BROADCAST: Wednesday, September 10. The leaders of the CARIFORUM group of nations – the Caribbean Community and the Dominican Republic – meet in Barbados to clarify positions on the negotiated economic partnership agreement the region negotiated with the world's largest trading bloc, the European Union. The final episode of Caribbean TradeBeat Extra gives the floor to Henry Gill, the director general of the CRNM, as he speaks on the EPA, what it could do for the region's economies and even its efforts at unity and what Caribbean trade negotiators have achieved that's now the envy of the world.