Barbados exploring trade links with Panama, Costa Rica

Barbados is mounting a week-long trade mission to Panama and Costa Rica that it says represents an important initiative to increase the island's trade and investment opportunities and also designed to spur economic growth and development, while creating employment.

Tourism Minister Richard Sealy is heading the October 18-26 trade mission that also includes the Minister of Industry, Small Business and Rural Development, Denis Kellman; Barbados' ambassador to Washington, John Beale, who has responsibility for Panama and Costa Rica; director of the Barbados Investment and Development Corporation, Sonja Trotman.

Permanent Secretary in the Division of Foreign Trade, Bentley Gibbs, said Panama and Costa Rica "are not new markets for Barbados," but explained that stronger linkages had not been forged because of technical and administrative barriers.

Gibbs said those issues were gradually being resolved.

He said Barbados is party to an agreement establishing a Free Trade Area between CARICOM and Costa Rica, as well as a number of economic and social bilateral instruments with Panama.

"So, Barbados is now seeking to increase cooperation with those Central American countries and make those arrangements work to our mutual benefit.

"Barbados has limited trade with Costa Rica in spite of the free trade agreement between the two territories," he said.

Examining full potential

Although the Costa Rican market has consistently been a source of finished goods and raw materials for Barbadian exporters and importers, respectively, the export potential of this market has not yet been fully explored by Barbadian firms," Gibbs said.

The senior Barbados government official said that the Panamanian market was 'ripe' for Barbadian goods and services suppliers to exploit.

He said there were some viable areas for market penetration in both countries, and listed some of them as tourism, educational, entertainment, cultural, professional and financial services.

Underscoring the importance of this mission, Gibbs disclosed that last year Cabinet instructed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade to prepare a strategy paper on how Barbados could further access trade with Costa Rica and Panama.

"The ministry undertook this mandate, informed by its portfolio responsibility to manage and advance the agenda of the Council for Investment, Exports, Foreign Exchange and the Diaspora," he said.

Barbados established diplomatic relations with Costa Rica and Panama in 1972 and 1975, respectively. However, the island's relationship with Panama dates back to the construction of the Panama Canal when thousands of Barbadians worked alongside other West Indians in building that waterway. Many of their descendants still live in Panama.

Apart from the Barbados private and public-sector organisations participating in the trade mission, the Caribbean Export Development Agency is providing financial support for a regional component.

As a result, representatives from the chambers of commerce in Antigua, Dominica, Grenada, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia and St Vincent and the Grenadines will accompany the mission, as well as two officials from the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States secretariat.