MINISTER of Finance, Winston Jordan has officially amended the Customs Act to remove the United Kingdom (UK) from the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between CARIFORUM and the European Union (EU).

The decision to remove the UK from the agreement was initiated, after the UK had announced that it will be withdrawing from the EU, a move which was called BREXIT.
An order from Minister Jordan, which was published in the Official Gazette on November 1, stated: “any reference of the UK in the CARIFORUM- European community Economic Partnership Agreement shall be constructed as deleted immediately after October 31, 2019.”

As a result of the order, the agreement establishing the free trade area between the CARIFORUM states and the European community, will now exclude the UK.

The CARIFORUM EPA, of which Guyana is a member, grants all CARIFORUM goods, with a temporary exception for rice and sugar, duty-free and quota-free access to the EU.  The CARIFORUM region was the first group among African, Caribbean, and Pacific countries to secure a comprehensive EPA with Europe that covers not just goods, but services, investment, and trade-related issues, such as innovation and intellectual property.
With the UK now officially out of the EU-EPA, the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the CARIFORUM and the UK, which was signed in March this year for the establishment of a UK-EPA, is expected to take effect.

Back in March, Ambassador David Hales signed the CARIFORUM-United Kingdom Economic Partnership Agreement and a MoU on behalf of the Government of Guyana.

According to a report on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website, the signing, which took place on the margins of the twenty-fifth meeting of the CARIFORUM Council of Ministers in St. Lucia, is of economic importance to Guyana’s private sector considering that the UK is Guyana’s largest trading partner in Europe and its sixth overall. The partnership accounts for about two per cent of imports, almost nine per cent of all exports. The UK is an important market for export of Guyana’s sugar, rice and rum.

At the regional level, absorbing about a quarter of exports from the Caribbean, the UK is the largest trading partner for CARIFORUM.

Signing the agreement was a direct response to the impending exit of the UK from the EU as the current trade arrangement governing Guyana’s exports to the British market will lapse once that state leaves the regional body.

Additionally, this action was the culmination of an approach agreed between CARIFORUM and the UK in March 2017 to ensure continuity in the existing preferential trading relations, including duty free quota conditions, among others.

Eight other CARIFORUM Member States — Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, St. Lucia, St. Kitts and Nevis, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines — signed the Agreement, while others have signaled their intention to do so shortly.