Lavern Clarke, Staff ReporterTHEY HAVE four more years to prepare, but Jamaican businesses have little confidence that their companies will be ready for the super-efficient pace of the world markets, once preferential access to Europe is dismantled.
The local private sector has signalled its "distress" to African-Caribbean-Pacific (ACP) Secretary-General Jean-Robert Goulongana during talks here this week with business-people, "who are very worried" about the fate of their industries.
Preferences will fade into history at the start of 2008, and, while noting the vulnerability of the group of developing nations, Goulongana told university students that "we have to adapt or die!" He was speaking during a lecture at the Mona School of Business last Tuesday.
The ACP official, though himself expressing concern about what the future will bring, said it was incumbent on the grouping to grasp the emerging opportunities in light of analyses which has shown, he said, that not all states have developed under the system of preferences, having had little incentive to compete.
Much of the uncertainty centres around the proposal that emerged from within the EU to divide the African, Caribbean and Pacific group into four blocs, and to negotiate partnership agreements separately with each.
Though the geographic distribution is still under discussion, the idea is to split the 78-member group into Economic Partnership Areas (EPAs) on a regional basis, with the Caribbean being one region. Talks aimed at defining the structure of each EPA begin in six months, but each region is expected to emerge with its own specific relationship with the EU.
The proposal charts new waters for the ACP bloc of developing countries, and businesses are unsure whether the EPAs which would have reciprocal trading arrangements with the European bloc would assist trade or kill off industries.
REALM OF THE UNKNOWN
"It's a worry I share," said Goulongana, speaking through an interpreter. "We are leaving the certain to enter the realm of the unknown."
The secretary-general's concern stretches beyond the dilemma facing businesses, however. With negotiations set to start in September with the powerful EU, he made two appeals Tuesday that ACP member nations remain unified and continue to speak with a concerted voice in their separate talks; and for help from the academic community to assist the ACP craft its negotiating position.
"We need researchers in the universities, scientists to do studies, and give the appropriate arguments to help us defend our interests," he pleaded.
The preferential relationship between the two groupings has extended over several decades, in different arrangements under which the EU basically guaranteed the ACP nations a market for particular goods at prices that were often higher than the world market. And it was done on a non-reciprocal basis, meaning that the developing countries were not similarly obliged to offer Europe the same level of access to their markets.
FIVE-YEAR SPAN
Cotonou, the arrangement under which these preferences will be dismantled, will continue the programme of development assistance, including disburse-ments over a five-year span to assist governments and industries build capacity for their integration into the world economy. The current package amounts to $13.5 billion euro.
However, the 20-year Cotonou agreement will take a new approach to aid disbursement, under a regime which now specifies that donor recipients ensure certain deliveries as a condition of continuing aid.
"Under Lome, assistance was a given; now the resources are not guaranteed," said Goulongana, adding that the new regime was meant to address "donor fatigue" and to assure European taxpayers that grant funds were being effectively applied by the recipient governments.
