(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) Coming on the heels of a first of its kind coordination and network building meeting for officials of national Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) implementation units of the fifteen CARIFORUM states on 2 and 3 August in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, a strong contingent of those officials are gathered in London this week for a meeting where the CARIFORUM-EU EPA is taking centre stage.
The functionaries on hand are among other delegates, comprising high ranking officials and business representatives from both the Caribbean and the European Union (EU), who are attending the two-day 2nd CARIFORUM-EU Business Forum underway from August 8. The Forum is being convened under the theme ‘Making the CARIFORUM-EU Economic Partnership Agreement Work’.
The Caribbean Export Development Agency (Caribbean Export) in collaboration with the African Caribbean & Pacific States Business Climate (ACP BizClim) is hosting the event, which is one among a series of activities that Caribbean Export is staging under the banner of its London Engage initiative unfolding at the Grosvenor House Hotel on Park Lane, London from August 4-10.
London Engage activities are funded by the EU’s 10th European Development Fund (EDF) Regional Private Sector Development Programme (RPSDP), with support from ACP BizClim, UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH.
Regional EPA functionaries have repeatedly expressed the view, most recently at their meeting in Santo Domingo last week, that the Region’s private sector has to be better positioned to take advantage of and leverage the various facets of the Agreement. It is widely recognized that to date the record has been mixed, in this regard. The CARIFORUM-EU Business Forum is deemed a pivotal opportunity to advance both public and private sector efforts that are aimed at CARIFORUM firms capitalizing, to a greater degree, on the Agreement, given that the meeting is geared at identifying business opportunities for trade between the Caribbean and European markets as well as attracting foreign direct investment from Europe to the Caribbean.
With regard to gauging the success of the Business Forum, an EPA official at the meeting – Ambassador Errol L. Humphrey of the EPA Implementation Unit of Barbados – expressed the view held by his counterparts in attendance at the meeting that “CARIFORUM economic operators need to utilize the event to develop a better understanding of the EU market and how it works, and secondly those business persons need to form strategic partnerships with their EU counterparts that are geared at making maximum use of the EPA. Ultimately, it is those relationships that they will need to lean on going forward, as they harness the EPA.”
The Business Forum’s main objectives are to create awareness about the EPA and to promote business opportunities within sectors that are readily positioned to do business in the EU. This year, the Forum has as its focus manufacturing and cultural industries. In this regard, the Forum is designed to enhance the level of trade and investment between CARIFORUM States and the EU. It seeks to build private sector capacity in the Caribbean Region, by providing a platform to facilitate dialogue between entrepreneurs and investors from the Caribbean and Europe.
The fifteen signatory Caribbean Forum of African, Caribbean and Pacific (CARIFORUM) States to the EPA are the independent CARICOM Member States and the Dominican Republic.
