ROSEAU, Dominica – The newly elected president of the Caribbean Manufacturer's Association (CMA), John Robin, says he plans to use his tenure to promote intra Caribbean trade as a means of significantly reducing the billions of dollars spent on importing manufactured products into the region.
(File Photo) He said while the region imports in excess of EC$30 billion (One EC dollar=US$.037 cents) “we only export 16 billion and so there is a deficit of about 18 billion. So what we are really trying to do is to see how we can promote intra Caribbean trade and we can also boost manufacturing.
“One of the things we are trying to do is to look at the firms that are viable in each of the member states of CARICOM (Caribbean Community) and we are trying to work with the individual firms and individual countries to do a scientific analysis of their requirements and open them to the possibility of increased funding”.
Robin said that regional manufacturers need to “scale up and we must not necessarily look at ourselves as being very minute in the Caribbean, although we are kind of small, but if we are able to do the necessary scientific analysis and we could seek to achieve economies of scale, we look at what our competitive advantages are, we will realize with such an approach we can be as competitive as possible’.
Robin, who is also President of the Dominica Manufactures Association, said there were other areas, including capacity utilization that the new CMA executive would be pursuing during his tenure.
“One of the areas we are looking at is capacity utilization, our procurement strategy in terms of ensuring that we have the right technology that we do not allow other products to come into our markets but we also globalize our whole approach by going and find markets all where they are available”.
He said that it is also necessary for CWA and its members to implement “critical measures to reduce costs so that we can be as competitive as any developed country.
“There are areas where we cannot be competitive, but there are areas where we can be competitive that we need to explore and exploit,” he added.
The CWA executive has an annual rotation presidency with Dominica being replaced by Trinidad and Tobago in 2022.
