Erica Virtue, Staff Reporter
DEVELOPED countries, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the Free Trade Areas of the Americas (FTAA) have been accused of manipulation and interference in trade matters involving CARICOM states.
The accusations come at the start of this week's Fourth Ministerial Conference on trade in Doha, Qatar, and what is perceived as tactics by developed countries to divide and conquer developing nations.
Christopher Sinkler, executive co-ordinator of the Barbados-based Caribbean Policy Development Centre (CPDC) accused the United States, Canada, Japan and the European Union (EU) "the quad", of pressuring developing countries to have a new round of trade arrangements.
According to him, "the quad", manipulates information on trade by keeping it to themselves and handing down judgements on small countries like those of CARICOM. Describing their modus operandi as "getting into their corporate rooms with the cocktails and agree over what they term to be the way forward...", he said the behaviour of the developed countries was "unsightly and disgusting".
He criticised the WTO for playing politics and interfering with countries forcing them to take sides.
While supporting and acknowledging that the region needs international trade, Mr. Sinkler said at a time when there is access to more trade and international gateways, "results so far have indicated that poor countries have become poorer and rich countries richer."
He said statistics have shown that the few rich countries of the world have access to 80 per cent of the world's wealth, while the poor countries combined have access to the remaining 20 per cent. He quoted statistics which showed that more persons are now living below the poverty line, because in some instances, trade has devastated the economies of some small countries.
Pointing to the devastation of the Haitian rice industry as one CARICOM example, and the loss of favoured nation status for Caribbean bananas as another, he said in the Haitians experience, their basic human right of providing for themselves and their families were eroded after the United States decreed that Haiti should lower import cost on rice.
Rice then flooded the Haitian market, putting some 40,000 persons out of work. He believed that one of the reasons for Haiti's acceptance of the U.S.'s directive is that the Government wanted to get food to its people. He said also that Haiti felt that by accepting the directive, it was repaying the U.S. for assisting Aristide to power.
Caribbean nations also came in for criticism as, he said, developed countries infiltrate poor countries like ours, because "we lack seriousness trading between ourselves."
"We need to be more serious about trade between us, as CARICOM countries, before we can embark on wider international trade matters..." he said.
He was addressing a two-day workshop on trade, put on by the CPDC, Alliance of Canada and the Caribbean Development Bank, at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Port-of-Spain in Trinidad.
