CARIFORUM and UK EPA Study

dominance in the Travel services sector was sufficient to hand the region an overall positive trade surplus with the UK. However, while the UK remained a leading trade partner for the region, it only managed to supply one-tenth of the region’s services imports, with only a handful of States responsible for that trade. Furthermore, the region’s top performing services importers polled extremely low import numbers with the UK, relative to their global totals, indicating that the latter was not a preferred source market for their services consumers. On the export side, the UK as a potential market for CARIFORUM services also appeared to be under utilized, given that it imported US$2.7 trillion worth of services during the period 2008 to 2019, of which the region’s total exports to the UK was just 0.7%. At the same time, the region’s global services exports during the period were equivalent to less than 8% of UK demand. This suggests that there is considerable room for CARIFORUM’s growth and expansion into the UK’s market, subject to any barriers of hurdles that may confront CARIFORUM services exporters. Further compounding this issue was the fact that the rate of participation by CARIFORUM States in the sectors analysed was limited, indicating low uptake of the market access opportunities in the UK afforded by the EPAs, with the region’s trading activities being highly concentrated in only a few categories, thereby increasing its vulnerability to exogenous shocks and other external developments. At the sectoral level, the UK’s services exports to CARIFORUM suggest that its comparative advantage lies in a few dominant non-goods and non-government related services categories: i.e., Other Business Services; Transport; Travel; and Insurance and Pension Services, which accounted for 87% of the UK’s total services exports to the region, by value, during the period 2008-2019. However, the UK’s exports in all sub-sectors, with the exception of construction and financial services, showed signs of growth potential, with CARIFORUM’s demand for Maintenance and Repair services (83%), Insurance and Pension services (76%) and Other Business Services (56%), in particular, growing by the largest percentages over the period.

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