PORT OF SPAIN — The Trinidad and Tobago Manufacturers’ Association issued a statement Sunday afternoon backing the government’s three counter-amendments tabled at the Kingston CARICOM tariff harmonization meeting, calling the original twenty-four-month timeline “unrealistic for the regional manufacturing base.”
The TTMA statement, signed by the association president, argues the proposed Common External Tariff framework would expose local producers to “asymmetric pressure” before they have time to retool. The forty-eight-month timeline tabled by the government, the statement says, “balances integration with industrial survival.”
Not all voices in the country agree.
The Trinidad and Tobago Chamber of Industry and Commerce, in a separate Monday statement, called for “a timeline that reflects regional commitment, not protectionist comfort.” The Chamber did not endorse the government’s amendments.
The University of the West Indies’ Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies released a working paper on Sunday concluding that a forty-eight-month timeline would, on current trajectory, “render the harmonization framework substantively void” by the time it took effect.
Government sources, speaking on background, say the Cabinet position was finalized in a Friday meeting and is being held firm in Kingston. The Minister of Trade has not given a press conference since Saturday morning.
Other CARICOM delegations have privately expressed frustration. One unnamed Eastern Caribbean negotiator told Trini Dispatch the Trinidad position is “the same position from 2019, with the dates moved forward.” The Secretariat has not responded to questions about whether the meeting will be extended into Wednesday.
The TTMA represents roughly four hundred member firms. The TTCIC represents over five hundred. The two have, in principle, members in common.
The country’s CARICOM position is being made by one of them.