CARICOM complainants don't need new bureaucracy

Christopher Tufton, the shadow foreign affairs and foreign trade minister, doesn't seem to get it.

So, he is shopping around for more bureaucracy - a mechanism, he says, for public-private sector consultation on trade disputes with Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica's Caribbean Community (CARICOM) partners, with whom we have a trade deficit of nearly US$1 billion.

Jamaica's private sector says Port-of-Spain doesn't play fairly: that it cheats on CARICOM's rules of origin, illegally subsidises its producers and places non-tariff barriers in the way of our exports.

All of this may be true. But there are myriad mechanisms for dealing with disputes within CARICOM, up to taking matters to the Caribbean Court of Justice, the tribunal that interprets the treaty.

However, pursuing disputes demands facts and empirical data. Jamaica's foreign affairs and foreign trade ministry is the agency of competence for dealing with CARICOM. The commerce ministry, too, has a role.

What Mr Tufton should do is to encourage our enterprises to come with the facts and use the system.

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