The World Trade Organisation (WTO) will today conclude a three-day workshop being held at the Marriot International Hotel Georgetown, aimed at assisting Caribbean Countries in consolidating their knowledge of the transparency principles and disciplines of the Technical Barriers to Trade Agreement (TBT), decisions and recommendations.
Erik Wijkström, Counsellor-Trade and Environment Division WTO
Erik Wijkström, Counsellor – Trade and Environment Division, WTO, said the Regional workshop is about issues relating to non-tariff barriers trade, including technical and regulatory matters and standard issues.
“The workshop is over three days and the idea is to raise issues that are important to the Region and explain what the rights and obligations are under the World Trade Organisation rules and to empower the Region to be more active at the WTO in Geneva,” he told journalists at the Marriott on Tuesday.
He emphasised that all countries have a right to protect their consumers, to ensure that food is safe. And while the WTO does not prevent or take away that right, this must be done in a way that will not affect trade. According to the WTO representative, if a country is trying to protect the health of its consumers, it has to be done in a uniform way.
“So you cannot allow a product to come from one country and the same one you forbid from your neighbour. Then we will be talking about discrimination. You cannot be allowed to discriminate when you implement non-tariff barriers. You are however, allowed to implement barriers to trade if it’s about protecting environmental health and similar issues,” he said.
Wijkström also pointed out there is a general trend where there is the idea that with the reduction of tariffs, they can be replaced with other ways to restrict trades.
Trumel Redmond, Technical Officer – Caricom Regional Organisation for Standards and Quality (CROSQ) said the workshop comes off the heels of a successful regional intervention on the Development and Implementation of Technical Regulations and Methods of Referencing Standards in Caricom Member States which culminated in a two-day workshop held last week in Trinidad and Tobago.
The CROSQ is a regional inter-governmental organisation established in February 2002 to facilitate the development of regional standards, promote the harmonisation of metrology systems and support the sustainable production and trade of goods and services in the Caricom Single Market and Economy (CSME).
That intervention which was supported by the ACP-EU TBT Programme yielded three sub-regional workshops held in November 2016 followed by onsite and offsite mentoring and coaching work assignments to the core beneficiaries in Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago. The exercise, he said, provided invaluable experiences and lessons learnt in researching and developing a Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA) and then a Technical Regulation (TR).
“Some of the participants of the regional workshops are in fact here today so the training this week will undoubtedly further strengthen their understanding and application of the TBT Agreement. The experiences and lessons learnt from this process will assist CROSQ during this year to write a Caribbean Guide on Good Regulatory Practice (GRP), inclusive of customised templates for a Preliminary Impact Assessment (PIA), Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA) and Technical Regulation,” Redmond said.
He said the CROSQ was granted Observer Status on the WTO Committee on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) in June 2016. Given CROSQ’s role in addressing regional TBT issues, Observer Status in the WTO-TBT Committee is a natural fit as it provides an opportunity to build regional capacity, strengthen information dissemination systems and ensure representation of the region’s perspective in the international arena.
According to Redmond, the workshop significantly contributed to building Regional capacity in understanding the TBT Agreement and its transparency provisions, as well as the utilisation of the WTO e-tools to facilitate same.
