Dionne Rose, Staff Reporter

The Caribbean region is making slow progress in completing negotiations for the economic partnership agreement (EPA).

EPAs are the successor pacts to the non-reciprocal preferential trade regimes of the Cotonou Agreement and its predecessor, the Lomé Convention, which have governed European Union (EU)/African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) trade for more than three decades.

The recently concluded technical trade ministers meeting held in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, on Friday, did not yield much progress.

Not good

According to Dr. Richard Bernal, head of the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery, the outlook for making progress in the negotiations was not good.

"The reason for that is that the region had postponed make decisions, which would enable it to do the following: one, make a credible and coherent market- access offer; two, to improve our initial offer on services," said Ambassador Bernal.

This would be in response to the EU's offer earlier this year to remove all existing tariffs and quota limitations on goods and services from all ACP countries, equalising its offer of concessions to poor countries under the Everything But Arms Agreement.

According to a source, the region deferred making a decision on the matter because two countries - Grenada and Belize - had not made their submissions as it related to the market-access offer.

Dr. Bernal pointed out that the slow pace by CARIFORUM could be detrimental to the region.

"What this means is that the current schedule of negotiations to complete the EPA is in serious jeopardy," he told The Gleaner.

Dr. Bernal warned that if the region did not complete the negotiations on time, it would be moved to the EU's generalised system of preferences tariff regime, which, he said, is less advantageous than the current arrangements, which end on December 31.

The region, earlier this year, was commended by EU Commissioner Peter Mandelson, who said it was way ahead of the other groups in the EPA negotiations and stood to gain more benefits than other ACP regions.

Yesterday, Dr. Bernal told The Gleaner that the deadlines set by the region to complete negotiations were no longer on target.

"The aim was to finish the negotiations by the middle of October so it could go to countries to examine it legally and otherwise," he said. "Now we are likely to miss those dates."