Guyana’s trade markets limited to few WTO members

Dec 25, 2017 News

An analysis of Guyana’s trade relations reveals that it has conducted trade with 67 members of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Among the 67 are the 14 other member states of CARICOM.
Since CARICOM is treated as a single market, one is in effect talking about 53 other member states of the WTO with which Guyana does business.
Despite having trade relations with 41 percent of the membership of the WTO, Guyana’s trade remains stubbornly undiversified, particularly on the export side. Only five of the 53 markets impacted the country significantly between 2006 and 2015.
Those five markets account for 73 percent of Guyana’s GDP, 70 percent of its exports and foreign revenues and 47 percent of its imports. They are CARICOM, the United States of America (USA), Canada, the United Kingdom (UK)/European Union (EU) and Venezuela.
CARICOM accounts for 25 percent of Guyana’s GDP. Trade is concentrated between Barbados, Jamaica, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago which collectively represented 92 percent of total trade with CARICOM in 2014 and 2015. The USA accounts for 24 percent, Canada is responsible for 12 percent, the UK contributes seven percent and Venezuela accounts for five percent of our GDP.
The remaining 27 percent of the GDP comes from 48 other WTO-member countries none of which individually has a significant bearing on the national output. What this indicates is that the diversity in our trade relations is more on the import side.
MAIN TECHNOLOGICAL TRENDS
The age of information technology is here. Whilst efforts are being made to bridge the digital divide in Guyana, globally, e-commerce and the digital economy generated $2,272 billion in revenues in 2015, an increase of 19.9% over the previous year and $2,671 billion in 2016, a 17.5% increase over 2015.
The Private Sector needs to take note of these developments and move towards using digital platforms to market their products.
On the agricultural commodity side, the recent focus has been on organic cultivation and production, and investing in research for more resilient seed species.

REMOVAL OF TRADE BARRIERS
There has been minimal progress in the removal of trade barriers globally. Majority of countries seek to address these issues via the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement, as well as via other multilateral, continental and/or bilateral trading arrangement.
With regard to non-tariff barriers these are usually addressed by regulatory reforms and should be non-discriminatory. In recent times, some countries, Mexico for example, have sought to be creative in addressing regulatory reform: encourage wider use of IT tool, use of international standards for technical regulations, etc.
To address some of these barriers, the Government of Guyana is working with counterpart agencies in destination countries for the removal of these barriers as these initiatives continue.
In addressing concerns of small developing countries, alternatives thus far include joint public-private involvement, cooperation in health and safety matters as well as in agronomic and biological research.
At the regional level there could be effective public-private coordination, outreach/education activities, training and inspection, and in many cases the adoption of common standards as in the case of CARICOM.
There are also efforts being made to access technical assistance for the Private Sector to meet entry and standards requirements at destination markets.
These requirements also have implications for lab and testing facilities required to ensure that our exports reach certain standards required by destination countries. To this end, the government has taken initiatives aimed at the establishment of up-to-date testing facilities to improve the quality of exports.

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Guyana’s trade markets limited to few WTO members

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