The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE
Tribune Business Reporter
nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

The Government is preparing to sign four bilateral agreements with Haiti next week, as it looks to nternational trade to provide another economic growth avenue for the Bahamas.

Ryan Pinder, minister of financial services, said Haitian president, Michel Martelly, was expected in Nassau for the signing. Those agreements include an agreement for trade in agriculture and fisheries.

Mr Pinder added that there had been discussion at the “very highest levels” on not just trade in goods with Haiti, but also trade in services as well.

“Haiti is very interested in developing their financial infrastructure, and they are looking to the Bahamas for some technical support, knowledge and even participation in the financial infrastructure they are creating,” said Mr Pinder.

“That’s an export of our services to Haiti to be able to give our professionals new markets, opportunities and development within our financial services system.”
 Mr Pinder added: “We have had discussions with other countries, certainly the Dominican Republic about our tourism product because of our expertise in that area. We have an opportunity to provide our people with a new market to work in. We are having additional discussions and a lot of that is around services.”
 Mr Pinder explained that global trade trends are not supportive of traditional industry concepts centred on manufacturing a product from the ground up.

He said the Bahamas could serve as the trade centre where inputs from various countries are brought together, and then partial or finished products are exported globally.

Mr Pinder suggested that Freeport possesses the necessary logistics infrastructure to create ‘value-added’ trade centers.

“We are at the point now where the Bahamas needs at least a third or fourth prong to its economic strategy,” he added.

“Certainly we have tourism and financial services, which are very strong, but the population is growing and Bahamians are becoming educated in different areas than they were before.

“We have to look to new opportunities. We believe that trade, and especially a concise strategy such as the global value chain, is just that.”

International trade expert, Dr Sherry Stephenson, is in the Bahamas today on a two-day visit to undertake a case study, and draft a strategy paper, on
positioning the Bahamas in global value chains.
 “This is really an opportunity study. We will look in areas where we could leverage some of the benefits we have already in the Bahamas. We have done a number of missions in Brazil, for instance,” said Mr Pinder.

“There are two industries that they are world leaders in but they have difficulty penetrating the European market because of quotas; that is sugar and poultry. We believe we could add the value component to something like that, maybe refine the raw sugar into finished sugar or package and create the end product of poultry, where adding that value makes it become a product of the Bahamas.

“Due to the Economic Partnership Agreement we can have that product, which originally came from Brazil, now become a product of the Bahamas. Because of the value added we give it access to the European market on a duty-free and quota-free basis, therefore positioning the Bahamas on the global value chain.

“The study I envision will look at some of these opportunities that exist rather than trying to create something from scratch.”