Trade pacts need revisiting, says Grant

SOME OF the multilateral trade agreements which Jamaica is a part of need to be re-examined because they are "very biased" to outside producers and are not in the best interest of local farmers, Senator Norman Grant has charged.

Grant argued that most of these agreements, which fall under the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the Economic Partnership Agree-ment (EPA) and within the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), were negotiated "at a time when everyone was talking about free trade".

"Some of those agreements are not supportive of a Jamaican farmer taking out all of his investment to put into agriculture, which we continue to do without any safeguard of huge importation," he said.

Using the dairy industry as an example, Grant suggested that Government should now look to "recalibrate" some of these agreements, as part of an attempt to bring back some level of predictability in the local economy.

"The point I am making is that, as a result of the trade agreements, we have seen what has happened to the dairy industry. We allowed milk powder to come in, cheap milk powder, and then when the dairy industry went, the price of milk powder went up," he asserted, during a recent Gleaner Editors' Forum in Mavis Bank, St Andrew.

"The only reason why we are self-sufficient in chicken meat today and table eggs is because there is some level of safeguard."

However, officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade quickly shot down Grant's argument, stressing that Jamaica was bound by these agreements and that local private-sector interests have largely ignored their plea to be part of the negotiations that go into them.

Serves ja's interest

Foreign service officer at the ministry, Lisandra Colley, said being part of the trade agreements served Jamaica's interest.

Colley added that Jamaica has been granted special privileges under almost all arrangements, including agreements with other developing countries.

"Our problem is not a market-access opportunity problem," she said. "Our problem is a production problem, as far as we are seeing, and a marketing problem."

She also pointed out that most of the trade agreements have safeguards to protect sensitive industries.

"Whenever there is a surge in imports, there are in-built mechanisms in the agreements that we can, through our anti-dumping and subsidies commissions, protect our farmers or (other) sensitive industries," she explained.

Her colleague at the ministry, Patrice Laird-Grant, said most of the agreements now in place did not have the benefit of any significant input from the private sector.

"Half of our problem is that whenever we are about to negotiate a new agreement we send out numerous communications to various stakeholders asking for them to give comments, let us know what is in this that you don't want to see there, what is it that you want to see put in, and seldom do we get responses," Laird-Grant charged.

Colley said it was clear that local farmers and other interest groups did not understand the trade agreements and the opportunities they provide.