CARIFORUM and UK EPA Study

St. Kitts and Nevis recorded strong domestic competitive advantage in its exports of Government Goods and Services, which return moderate to strong RRCA indices in all but the first two years, though its RRCA indices for exports of Financial services returned much larger values than these during the last six years, steadily climbing from 5.36 to 13.7, significantly overtaking the latter in the process. This suggests some kind of resurgence in Financial services exports from St. Kitts and Nevis to the UK, and thus a potential growth area for the country. Saint Lucia was most dominant in its exports of Insurance and Pension services, with RRCA indices of 2 or close to 2 in several years. However, its exports of Travel services to the UK was the most consistently competitive, despite this being only a weak level of competitiveness and notwithstanding its overall dominance of the Travel sector across the wider CARIFORUM region. Finally, the export of Telecommunications, Computer and Information Services showed complete dominance in St. Vincent and the Grenadines’ basket of services exports to the UK, returning moderate values on the RRCA index in 9 of the 10 years assessed, trending to an overall positive competitive advantage in the process. Therefore, the assessment of the sectors in which CARIFORUM States enjoyed greatest export competitiveness domestically, on the basis of their sectoral RRCA performances across all of their services exports to the UK, shows that each State demonstrated at least weak to moderate levels of comparative advantage in at least two or more export services sectors, with a large majority of countries registering some level of comparative advantage in three or more sectors. However, the clear winner appeared to be Guyana, which demonstrated comparative and competitive advantages across the Financial Services, Charges for the use of IP, Insurance and Pension services, Telecommunications, Computer and Information services and Other Business services, suggesting that there exists a significant amount of untapped potential for Guyana in the export of services to the UK market.

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