An Indigenous Stroke!

The Errol Barrow Centre for Creative Imagination was the forum for the delivery of a lecture on the topic

The EPA and the Building of Post Colonial Economy in the Caribbean

by Former Prime Minister Owen Arthur. It was described as "brilliant" by Professor Hillary Beckles who hosted the lecture and indicated that it was the first in a disinguished series of lectures that would be sponsored by the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus.

Fmr. Prime Minister Arthur began by stating that in his view the new Economic Partnership Agreement with the European Union marked a significant departure from past arrangements in several respects. There was the breaking up of the African, Caribbean and Pacific States; reciprosity had to be a feature and it had to be WTO+, meaning that substantially all trade had to be liberalised. He also noted that the negotiations had been conducted in the context of the fact that the ties of a shared history with Europe had been eroded significantly. If the EPA had not been agreed Caribbean nations faced the prospect of commodities entering the duty-paid.

Arthur, an economist noted that the trade rules had changed over time. In the past they had been premised on trading arrangements that had at their core a developmental agenda. He was of the view that it was unfortunate the development studies was no longer considered seriously by the University. There was no longer a multi-disciplinary approach to developmental strategies by serious Caribbean scholars. He compared our times with the times of great Caribbean scholars like William Demas.

At the same time the Washington Consensus had done away with the notion that there should not be full reciprocity where states were unequal. A developmental agenda with the industrialised nations had turned primarily into a dialogue about security, money laundering, migration and taxation.

Fmr. Prime Minister Arthur recognised that while the EPA might have some imperfections the agreement did take into account the concept of special and differential treatment where arrangements were being made amongst unequal states. The EPA had therefore recognised some progress in treating S&D in a way that the modern WTO type agreements had not done. The EPA also puts substantial emphasis on market access in services where mutual recognition agreements have to be negotiated amongst professionals and institutions of learning. In his view then, it was absolutely critical for the appropriate implementation mechanism be created and put to work in order to ensure that the benefits of the agreement would be realised.

It would take the ingenuity and the industriousness of the region to make this new approach work in our own indigenous way!

The forum attracted many distinguished individuals including Sir Neville Nicholls,Sir Henry Forde, Dame Billie Miller,Dame Patricia Symmonds, Sir Richard Cheltenham, and the Leader of the Opposition, Ms. Mia Mottley.