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Since 1973, food imports from outside the region have grown at an average annual rate of 6.8 percent, according to Project Officer for Statistics at the CARICOM Secretariat, Deoram Persaud. Delivering the keynote address at a seminar on CARICOM’s trade performance, held on Thursday in the Executive Lounge of the CARICOM Secretariat, Persaud pointed out that food “ranked fourth on [the] list of commodities imported” from outside the region.
EXTRA-REGIONAL
Machinery and transport equipment, Persaud observed, was the top commodity imported, accounting for 28 percent of total extra-regional imports; while minerals, lubricants and related materials (19.6 percent), and manufactured goods (15.4 percent) were the second and third most imported commodities respectively.
Persaud posited that CARICOM’s extra-regional exports were led by mineral fuels, most of it going to the United States. According to Persaud, CARICOM’s extra-regional sales of rice have increased, thanks to preferential purchases by Venezuela under the PetroCaribe arrangement; while regional exports of banana and sugar, largely to the European Union (EU), recorded an overall decline in 2011.
The decline in the value of exports to the EU comes as that bloc is removing preferential access to its markets by regional producers.
INTRA-CARICOM
In an address that largely summarised CARICOM’s import-export structure, Persaud observed that intra-CARICOM trade has been positive, with significant growth being recorded in the early period of the integration movement; and despite external shocks, the share of intra-regional trade to total trade has, on average, increased and remains fairly stable.
“The average annual growth rate in intra-regional exports for [1973-2011] was 8.8 percent, [while] the share of intra-regional exports to total exports was 14.8 percent,” he stated, adding: “In value terms, intra-regional exports moved from US$0.1 billion in 1973 to US$2.6 billion in 2011 – approximately 30 times the value in 1973!”
Persaud said the intra-regional market was the second biggest destination for the region’s exports, absorbing 17.2 percent of the CARICOM total.
The statistician indicated thus: “Trinidad was the most dominant exporter, accounting for 71.3 percent of total intra-regional exports for 1973 to 2011, and 80.0 percent for 2006 to 2011.”
Observers have pointed out that the value of intra-regional exports by Trinidad and Tobago, CARICOM’s lone oil-and-gas producer, has risen on the back of buoyant crude prices.
Meanwhile, Jamaica and Barbados are the two largest destinations for intra-regional exports, collectively accounting for 46.7 percent of goods imported intra-regionally between 1973 and 2011.
Behind crude-related products, food and manufactured goods were the next two commodities traded most prominently intra-regionally, even as CARICOM imports significant amounts of these from abroad.
“There is much more scope for intra-regional trade,” Joycelyn Williams, an economist at the University of Guyana, told the Guyana Chronicle in an invited comment yesterday. She identified food as a critical area in which intra-regional trade must be boosted, and called for promotional events to encourage CARICOM firms to do business and invest in other countries within the region.
