President knocks financial institutions for `playing games'
From Sharief Khan in Montego Bay
GUYANA plans to raise delays in a major debt relief programme for heavily indebted countries when leaders from the region meet Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien here today. President Bharrat Jagdeo yesterday expressed his disappointment at the lack of movement on the Cologne Initiative that the major donor countries agreed on last year to ease the heavy external debt burden on Guyana and other developing countries. "We are very worried that the Cologne Initiative has not been implemented as envisaged at that time. Very few countries have actually received relief", he told the Chronicle. "In fact, I think it's only nine countries that have received some form of flow benefits, not stock benefits. This was not envisaged", Mr Jagdeo stressed. He explained that under the Cologne Initiative for HIPC (Heavily Indebted Poor Countries), the donors agreed they should examine 41 countries and that those countries should benefit almost immediately." A top official of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) told the Chronicle the initiative has not progressed as projected and the resources have not been flowing. President Jagdeo criticised the delay and noted that the debt issue is on the agenda of today's sixth Canada-CARICOM summit at the plush Half Moon beach and golf club resort here. "The multilateral financial institutions have been playing games to some extent because they are tasked with the implementation of the initiative and I hope that we can impress upon the Prime Minister of Canada that they just do not make these statements or declarations of intent without the follow-up action being put in place," he said. "...their representatives within the financial institutions should help to transform those statements into reality by putting pressure on the technical staff within these institutions to work on the initiatives at the practical level for speedy, early delivery", he said. Canadian officials have said that Chretien will offer support for deeper and faster debt relief for developing nations. With Mr Jagdeo at the summit are Foreign Minister Clement Rohee and Ambassador Elisabeth Harper. The President said he hopes to have "a private discussion" with Chretien to raise "some issues of concern to Guyana apart from the issues that are going to be discussed that would affect us as a whole." "These are issues that sometimes seem very far from us because (we are not now affected by them)," he said. He referred to the moves by the powerful Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to blacklist some countries, including some CARICOM members, for their financial jurisdiction (offshore centres) practices. "It may not seem to affect Guyana now because we do not have a deep financial sector...our financial sector is now deepening." "We do not have an offshore jurisdiction but in the long run it will (affect us), because the mere fact that the Caribbean now is seen, without any distinction, as a tax haven and as a potential money laundering jurisdiction, then it can affect other institutions that would want to come to countries like ours", Mr Jagdeo explained. "So it is a Caribbean issue and we all have to band ourselves together to fight it, regardless of whether you are going to be immediately affected or not." Issues on the agenda, including discussions on small states, the third Summit of the Americas Chretien will be hosting in Quebec in April, and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) are "very, very important for us", the Guyana leader said. "There were moves some time in the past to remove the voice that we have and this was pushed by the United States of America to a large extent", he said. Mr Jagdeo said, "we had to make sure that NAFTA caters for the needs of the smaller members of the free trade body". He said the region has managed "to secure that position but it is important that we have some of the larger partners within NAFTA, especially Canada here, to support us in the negotiations that are ongoing now." The Guyana President said he may raise with Chretien the recent controversy over the return of Guyanese-born deportees from Canada to Guyana after serving jail terms. He noted that this was raised before with Canada's Secretary of State for Latin America and Africa, Mr David Kilgour when he visited Guyana. "We discussed it extensively and the Canadian Government is aware of our concerns; we had very long discussions on the matter. "I may raise it with the Prime Minister of Canada but I know that he would have been briefed about our position on the matter given the discussions that we had in Guyana with Mr Kilgour", the President said. Sir Shridath Ramphal, Chief Negotiator for CARICOM's Regional Negotiating Machinery (RNM) expects today's meeting will "set the scene, in a sense, for the much more substantial talks which will take place in Canada next year." "...we must not expect from it a whole range of definitive outcomes. Nonetheless, it is an important and a significant opportunity", he told the Chronicle. "We have special relations with Canada. We have always had in Canada-CARICOM summits, a more familial kind of environment and that, I am sure is going to be present here", Ramphal said. This, he said, means "it makes for greater intimacy of discussion, a more relaxed nature of the discussion in which CARICOM leaders have an opportunity to convey (their concerns) to (Chretien)", he said. He said CARICOM has "anxieties...(and) concerns that have surfaced in the FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas) negotiations" and today's summit is significant. "It comes at a very good time in a regional sense", he said, adding that the region has just had under the RNM's auspices "the work of a reflections group, the coming together of a group from and beyond the region and before that a meeting of the entire college of negotiators, the latter directed very closely to the positions of CARICOM in the FTAA." "So we have on our minds matters that will form the basis of substantial discussions", he told the Chronicle. Sir Alister McIntyre, Chief Technical Adviser on the RNM, said there was a "whole range of issues" of concern to CARICOM but an important matter was the status of CARIBCAN, under which CARICOM benefits from an economic and trade development assistance programme with Canada. The scheme extends one way duty-free entry to more than 95 per cent of the region's exports to Canada, with the exception of textiles, clothing, footwear and agricultural projects, subject to the application of tariffs under the World Trade Organisation. McIntyre, a former CARICOM Secretary-General, as was Ramphal, said CARICOM wants to discuss possibilities for upgrading CARIBCAN "into a more comprehensive trade agreement that would encompass areas such as services, the so-called fourth generation trade-related measures, intellectual property, competition policy". He referred to Canada and CARICOM's participation in the FTAA and noted that Canada has recently concluded a bilateral free trade agreement with Chile and is well advanced in doing the same thing with Costa Rica. "We would like to feel that we are part of that process of building towards a wider hemispheric agreement", he said. McIntyre said today's meeting here is also an opportunity to touch base with Canada on some of the World Trade Organisation issues that are likely to surface at the turn of the year. "We don't have a lot of time but I think just simply pencilling in the trade issues of mutual interest and concern would be one of the things that this summit could well endeavour to do", he said. Chretien and other leaders attending the summit were expected here by last night.  Follow the goings-on in Guyana
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