Harnessing Standby Facility to Improve EPA Implementation

 

A senior Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) official has called upon members of the Caribbean Forum of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (CARIFORUM)  to make full use of a standby Facility for capacity building under the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the European Union.

Mr Clairvair Squires, Division Chief (Ag.), Technical Cooperation Division, laid down this challenge as he welcomed participants hailing from National EPA Implementation Units and Like Entities and the CARIFORUM Directorate of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat, to the CDB-organized Technical Briefing Meeting on the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) Standby Facility for Capacity Building gathered in Barbados on 11 April. Also on hand were Mr Felipe De La Mota, Programme Manager, Economic Section, Delegation of the European Union to Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean, and Ms Sonja Allyson Francis, Trade in Services and Investment Specialist, EPA Implementation Unit, CARIFORUM Directorate.

They both reaffirmed Mr Squires’ charge, and noted that with the advent of the Standby Facility EPA implementation stood to benefit.

The duration of the EPA Standby Facility—a €3.5m fund administered by the CDB, with support from National Authoring Officers (NAOs) in respective States—is three years (December 2012 to December 2015). The EU-financed Facility is to be managed by a Steering Committee, comprising representatives of the European Commission and the CARICOM Secretariat.

The EPA Standby Facility is coming on stream as part of a suite of initiatives financed under the 10th European Development Fund (EDF), the aim of which is to lend support to CARIFORUM in the implementation of commitments under the EPA in several areas. These include: (i) Fiscal Reform and Adjustment; (ii) Statistics in the Dominican Republic; (iii) Sanitary and Phyto-Sanitary (SPS) Programme; (iv) Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT); (v) Services Sector; (vi) Rum Sector; and (vii) Institutional and Implementation Capacity.

The Regional Private Sector Development Programme (RPSDP), which the Caribbean Export Development Agency (CEDA) manages, was the first initiative to be approved under the 10th EDF EU-CARIFORUM Caribbean Regional Indicative Programme (CRIP). The RPSDP officially began in March 2011and has a five year implementation period with €28.3m of the total amount provided under the EDF. This is a several fold, unprecedented increase in EDF funds made available to CEDA, so that it can lend much-needed, multi-faceted support to the regional private sector in its bid to breakthrough key external markets.

In his remarks, Mr Squires underscored that the EPA Standby Facility is intended to assist CARIFORUM States by underpinning national institutional capacities. These States typically fall short, in this regard, on account of their size and levels of development. In helping to address capacity constraints, the EPA Standby Facility is expected to shore up the ability of such States to address a variety of EPA implementation imperatives, against the backdrop of efforts—of which officials from relevant National EPA Implementation Units and Like Entities form a part—to devise National EPA Implementation Plans. This effort is limited to just over a half-dozen of these States. The expectation is that these Plans will better position States to tap designated resources falling under the EPA Standby Facility.  The Plans draw on the high level Draft EPA Regional Implementation Road Map, a document that identifies the broad actions to be taken in respect of implementation at the national and regional levels.

The objective of the Technical Briefing on the EPA Standby Facility is to provide participants with the skills and knowledge required to: (a) Complete or lead the completion of a results-focused application to the EPA Standby Facility that is in accordance with the Facility’s screening and appraisal criteria; (b) Manage the implementation of an EPA Standby Facility-financed project towards achieving planned outcomes; and (c) Prepare proposals for submission to the Facility which, as relevant, address similar capacity building needs of other CARIFORUM states.

Amongst the sessions on the agenda is one dedicated to an overview of the EPA Standby Facility, with emphasis on the objectives, scope and administration procedures. A group exercise and debrief geared at getting inputs from participants follows, with a view to highlighting the status of implementation at the national level, opportunities and challenges, lessons learnt and priority capacity building needs. That session is expected to build on a presentation made earlier in the day by Ambassador Errol Humphrey of the Barbados EPA Implementation Unit, the focus of which was the opportunities, challenges and the way forward with respect to EPA implementation. The day-long Meeting culminates in back-to-back sessions on a results-focused approach to the design and implementation of EPA Standby Facility projects and a group exercise, the focus of which is defining planned results, major activities and developing an implementation schedule.

The Technical Briefing is being convened one day ahead of a CDB-organized briefing on the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME) CSME Standby Facility, which is also administered by the CDB, with support from NAOs. It is a €3.45m fund.

The fifteen signatory Caribbean Forum of African, Caribbean and Pacific (CARIFORUM) States to the EPA are the independent CARICOM Member States and the Dominican Republic.

 

CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana

Details

Date Posted

April 15 2013