The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The Government will launch public consultation on its proposed Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) legislation “within the next week”, as it bids to play host to the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) director-general this June.

Ryan Pinder, minister of financial services, who has responsibilty for the Government’s trade agenda, said the Christie administration was already in talks with Pascal Lamy’s office to arrange a potential trip to this nation by the WTO chief.

Suggesting this would be “one of the first times” a WTO director-general had undertaken a “bilateral” visit to a Caribbean nation, Mr Pinder said the plan was for Mr Lamy to meet with both the Bahamian private sector and the Christie Cabinet.

Noting that Mr Lamy would be present in the Caribbean at this time to promote the ‘Aid for Growth’ strategy, Mr Pinder said such a visit would be “a significant, significant event” for the Bahamas in its continued efforts to accede to full WTO membership.

The Minister told Tribune Business that while the Bahamas had been due to return to Geneva this month for its third round of WTO negotiations, featuring both bilateral meetings and talks with the Working Party formed from countries that have an interest in trading with this nation, the organisation’s calendar meant this had been pushed back to June.

This, though, could work to the Bahamas’ advantage, as Mr Pinder said the extra time would enable it to present a report detailing all the legislative updates being made to bring this nation into line with the global trade body’s requirements.

“Everything is upbeat and very positive,” Mr Pinder told Tribune Business. “We are undertaking all of the internal technical analysis and responses to the bilateral negotiations, and updating the submissions to reflect the legislative agenda.”

He added that CROSQ, the Caribbean regional standards body, had recently been in the Bahamas to conduct a technical analysis of this nation’s so-called ‘barriers to trade’, identifying ‘gaps’ and strengths and weaknesses among government agencies and the private sector.

With consultation on the Bahamas’ proposed SPS laws and regulations the next item on the trade agenda, as it deals with the health and safety regime governing areas such as agriculture imports/exports, Mr Pinder said the Government was also moving to complete work on its overhaul of this nation’s intellectual property rights (IP) regime.

He added that the Government-appointed IP consultant was currently trying to integrate consultation feedback into the proposed legislation, and “hopefully he gets it back to us in the next couple of weeks”.

While not giving a timetable for bringing this package of Bills to Parliament, Mr Pinder added: “It’s a comprehensive suite of legislation, and we’re trying to make it as comprehensive as possible.”

Meanwhile, the Minister said the Government expected to receive within the next four-six weeks an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) implementation report.

Explaining that this had conducted another ‘gap analysis’, this time involving the trade treaty signed between the Bahamas-CARIFORUM and the EU, Mr Pinder said it would serve to launch the Government’s own EPA Implementation Unit.

He added that this would “feed into” the Government’s WTO agenda.