(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) The out-going Director-General of the Caribbean Forum of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (CARIFORUM) Directorate in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat, Mr Ivan Ogando Lora, has lauded the “spirit of cooperation” underpinning the development of National Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) Implementation Plans in the eight regional states that elected to pursue these Plans.
Mr Ogando expressed this view following the successful convening of Saint Lucia’s Validation Meeting in Castries, on July 5. The Meeting marked a crucial step in the finalization of that country’s draft EPA Implementation Plan, a step that most of the other CARIFORUM States participating in the initiative have also taken.
Saint Lucia is the latest CARIFORUM State to mount a Validation Meeting. The intention of the forum is to provide representatives of Government and national non-governmental organizations with the opportunity to be briefed on the draft National EPA Implementation Plan, while allowing for them to provide further input.
This approach builds on the consultative process that has informed the development of the Plan in all participating states, ahead of the finalization of the document. The expectation is that thereafter the Plan will be approved by Government, and then given effect.
Saint Lucia’s Validation Meeting was characterized as a “highly interactive” engagement. It attracted a wide cross-section of stakeholders. This has been the experience, too, in the other States where the Implementation Plan development initiative has been rolled out.
National authorities would have worked with a consultant to develop respective Implementation Plans, leveraging Caribbean Aid for Trade and Regional Integration Trust Fund (CARTFund) resources. National authorities have also worked closely with the CARICOM Secretariat-based EPA Implementation Unit, which has been involved in the initiative since its inception. The initiative has received the backing of a key partner institution, the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB).
It is this collaborative approach that has received high praise from the CARIFORUM Director-General. He noted that, given the array of policy areas that the EPA has a bearing on, collaboration between different actors and stakeholders in the implementation of the accord is “paramount.”
“Of necessity there must be a multi-level approach to EPA implementation in the Region, one that provides for interaction amongst stakeholders interspersed sub-nationally and regionally. At the regional level intergovernmental institutions play a key role, as do international development partners that are active in the Region and supporting the implementation of this landmark trade and development accord,” Mr Ogando said.
He underscored that the CARIFORUM Directorate looks forward to continuing to work “closely and productively” with the CDB, which remains integrally involved in EPA implementation, having first served as fund administrator for a series of CARTFund projects and now as fund administrator for the EU-financed €3.5m EPA Standby Facility for Capacity Building. The Standby Facility is intended to assist CARIFORUM States by underpinning national institutional capacities.
Mr Ogando expressed similar sentiments in relation to the Directorate’s collaboration with a host of other institutions involved in the implementation of a suite of EPA-related initiatives financed under the 10th European Development Fund (EDF), the aim of which is to lend support to CARIFORUM in the implementation of commitments under the EPA in several areas. These include: (i) Fiscal Reform and Adjustment; (ii) Statistics in the Dominican Republic; (iii) Sanitary and Phyto-Sanitary (SPS) Programme; (iv) Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT); (v) Services Sector; (vi) Rum Sector; and (vii) Institutional and Implementation Capacity.
Mr Ogando noted that with respect to his tenure as Director-General and EPA Regional Coordinator, a key priority has been to ensure that relevant cooperation frameworks between the CARIFORUM Directorate and respective partner institutions be established and consolidated, in light of the “shared responsibility” in advancing facets of EPA implementation.
The CARIFORUM Directorate comprises two Units, the EPA Implementation Unit and the Development Cooperation and Programming Unit.
The fifteen signatory CARIFORUM States to the EPA are the independent CARICOM Member States and the Dominican Republic.
