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Poverty,
Rising Cost of Living high on agenda of Special COTED
(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater, Georgetown,
Guyana) March 04, 2008: In its quest to stem the rising
cost of living in the Region, the Twenty-Fourth Special
Meeting of the Council for Trade and Economic Development (COTED)
is expected to make a determination regarding the removal or
reduction of the Common External Tariff (CET) on certain
commodities. The COTED Meeting will be held in Nassau, The
Bahamas on 5 March 2008.
`Poverty and the Rising Cost of living' was one of the
Agenda items of the Twelfth Special Meeting of Heads of
State and Government of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) in
December 2007. It will also be an item on the agenda of the
Nineteenth Inter-sessional Meeting of the Heads of State and
Government taking place in Nassau on 7-8 March.
At the meeting in Georgetown on 7 December 2007 at the
International Convention Centre, Liliendaal, Heads agreed
that the Common External Tariff (CET) was the most
appropriate instrument for an intervention at the Community
level to address the issue of the rising cost of living. A
Technical Team was subsequently established to review a set
of commodities which have a significant weight in the
Consumer Price Index, are not significantly produced or have
a close substitute in the Region, and which attract a CET.
At the end of its Twenty-Fifth Meeting in Georgetown in
January 2008, COTED requested Member States of the Caribbean
Community (CARICOM) to submit national lists of items on
which they would be prepared to reduce or remove the CET.
The COTED took this decision after lengthy, intense but
incomplete discussions in search of a single common list to
fulfill the mandate of the Heads of Government.
In addition to Poverty and the Rising Cost of Living, the
Special COTED will also consider the Report of the Meeting
of the Reflections Group which was held in Jamaica 28-29
February 2008. The Reflections Group reviewed CARICOM's
experience and approach to external trade negotiations using
the CARIFORUM-EC Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) case.
The meeting will be presented with the Agreement following
the completion of a review by legal minds.
An update on, and outlook for the multilateral trade
negotiations under the World Trade Organisation (WTO) will
be another key agenda item of the one-day meeting.
