CARIFORUM and UK EPA Study

7.16 Overall Assessment of CARIFORUM’s Sectoral and Domestic Export Competitiveness Performance

The foregoing results, therefore, indicate that each CARIFORUM country could point to at least one sector in which it enjoyed some level of comparative advantage at both the national and regional levels, and a total of 9 of the 15 CARIFORUM countries not only exhibited competitive dominance in a given services export sector at the national level, but was also the top performer at the regional level. This group of countries included Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago with 3 and 2 such instances, respectively, while Dominica, the DR, Guyana, Jamaica, St. Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia and Suriname each registering one instance in with it dominated at the regional level. The results also indicate that there is significant growth potential within a number of domestic export sectors, as well as across those sectors region-wide, which is a view that is supported by the overall trade surplus in favour of CARIFORUM, alongside an overall positive trend in its services exports to the UK. This export growth potential even extended to entire countries as well, with the outstanding performance of Guyana in relation to the strong comparative advantage observed across its top five domestic export sectors, as well as its repeated top five competitiveness rankings across a number of sectors throughout the region, suggesting that its services industry holds significant untapped potential vis-à-vis growth in exports of services to the UK market.

7.17 UK Trade in Value added Services and Opportunities for CARIFORUM

i.

Background to the Trade in Value Added Services

Similar to the production of goods, the supply of services is subject to both backward and forward linkages that create value chains, which interoperate either through direct continuous links or hubs and spoke relationships. This is true both within a given economy as well as internationally, due to the effects of globalisation, which have increased the opportunities for offshoring and near shoring of activities that have resulted in the fragmentation of both value and supply chains.

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