Free trade negotiations for the first protocol for the free trade agreement between the DR and Caricom concluded in Basse-Terre, St. Kitts yesterday. The agreement took 16 rounds of negotiations and almost four years. A first draft was signed 22 August 1998 in Santo Domingo during a Caribbean heads of state summit. The agreement grants duty free treatment to nearly 8,000 products, only 50 products, of which 31 are Caricom and 19 Dominican Republic. Pending still are origin criteria for assembly sectors and certain apparel, will be negotiated during the first annual revision of the protocol. Ambassador Frederic Emam Zade, who has rank of deputy minister of foreign relations, head the negotiations for the Dominican government. In the last round, the DR was able to exclude from the Caricom negative list pastas, coffee, rum, footwear, apparel, marmalades, tropical processed tropical fruit juices (except orange juice). Once the agreements enter into effect (it still needs to be passed by the Dominican Congress), the DR would become a bridge between Central America and the Caribbean whereby products from others islands can be processed and transformed into final products for export to nearby nations. Thus a trade block and market of about 60 million inhabitants would have been created.
