CARIFORUM and UK EPA Study

be a largely untapped area, and perhaps a low hanging fruit for the region’s exports of services to the UK.

vi. Summary of Sectoral RRCA analysis

The cross-country RRCA analysis that was conducted to identify both the comparative and competitive strengths of CARIFORUM States in the export of services to the UK, suggests that there was active participation by CARIFORUM States across a majority of the sectors assessed, with clear industry leaders emerging in most of areas, and in many instances, States displayed very strong levels of comparative advantage in these sectors. In the case of the region’s largest export sector – i.e., Travel services , Saint Lucia enjoyed the highest level of comparative advantage, but its corresponding competitive margins were fairly weak in comparison to other CARIFORUM States, suggesting that there was significant saturation within that market segment. This apparent market saturation is most likely due to the high level of penetration and contestability of the sector across the region, and perhaps internationally, which appears to have limited the opportunities for further growth in CARIFORUM’s exports of Travel services to the UK market. Notwithstanding, there are likely to be several niche opportunities for the region to promote growth in the sector by taking advantage of eco-tourism, community-based tourism, cultural/heritage tourism, and “work from abroad” travel/tourism arrangements. For Other Business services Suriname was the clear export leader, vis-à-vis the UK market, demonstrating very strong comparative advantage in the export of these services to the UK, as well as an equally strong competitive margin over nearest rival Guyana. Importantly, however, the apparent contestability of the sector is a potential indicator of the dynamism within this market segment for CARIFORUM services providers seeking to export to the UK, and therefore that significant opportunities remain to be exploited there.

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