Jamaica’s export of goods for the first two months 2010 grew 17 percentage points slower than the total Caribbean, indicating a comparatively slower post-crisis rebound, a United Nation (UN) body noted last week in a report littered with recommendations.

The export of goods declined 13 per cent for Jamaica but grew 4.4 per cent for the total Caribbean in 2010 during the first two months of the year compared with the corresponding period in 2009.

The statistics were revealed in the annual study — Latin America and the Caribbean in the World Economy 2009-2010, published last week by Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), which is one of five regional commissions of the United Nations Economic and Social Council.

For 2010, however, Jamaica wasn’t the worst performer–Bahamas declined 23.9 per cent.

The best performers included Trinidad & Tobago, up 10 per cent, Barbados, up 4.8 per cent, and the Eastern Caribbean countries, up 2.7 per cent.

Despite the downturn in Jamaica’s export of goods it was still an improvement over 2009 which registered a decline of 49.8 per cent which was in keeping with Caricom’s decline of 43 per cent.

“Preliminary data for 2010 shows, however, that exports in goods have begun to rebound,” according to the report.

The report revealed that the crisis which peaked in 2009 negatively affected Caribbean trade, with particularly adverse effects on domestic income due to the Caribbean economies’ high dependence on external markets. But discounting the global crisis Jamaica still underperformed the region, between 2003 to 2008 Jamaica’s exports of goods grew 12.5 per cent or nearly half the rate of the Caribbean Community (Caricom) at 23.5 per cent.

The study recommended that Caribbean countries address four key issues in order to return to a more sustainable development course:

*Deepening sub-regional integration by taking concrete steps toward the implementation of commitments made thus far and correcting existing deficiencies and weaknesses of the ongoing Caribbean integration process;

*Empowering institutional and human-resource capacities to take full advantage of the opportunities that trade agreements with developed economies offer, particularly the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the European Union;

*Diversifying exports to promote value generation, knowledge incorporation and productivity upgrading in export-related activities; and

*Enhancing intra- and extra-regional co-operation efforts on “supply-side constraints” accompanied by increased financial resources (including those available from Aid for Trade initiatives) to overcome such constraints in the face of increasingly difficult fiscal balances and limited financial resources in the region.

The annual report, which is a flagship of ECLAC, provides projections on regional trade in 2010 and analyses the role of international trade in economic recovery; the evolution of trade in the region over the past decade; the main Latin American subregional integration systems; how to make the most of the current export drive; the prospects of the Caribbean Community and Japan’s recent strategies to deepen its economic relations with Latin America and the Caribbean.

In July, ECLAC statistics revealed that Jamaica is projected to grow 10 times slower than the region in 2010. The debt-ridden island is expected to grow 0.5 per cent this year whilst the average among Latin America and Caribbean nations is 5.2 per cent according to ECLAC’s Economic Survey of Latin America and the Caribbean 2009-2010.

The highest growth rates projected in 2010 are in South America, led by the biggest economy in the region, Brazil with projections at 7.6 per cent, followed by Uruguay at 7.0 per cent, Paraguay at 7.0 per cent, Argentina at 6.8 per cent and Peru at 6.7 per cent. It stated that other countries in the region will have lower growth rates, such as the Dominican Republic at 6.0 per cent, Panama at 5.0 per cent, Bolivia at 4.5 per cent, Chile at 4.3 per cent and Mexico at 4.1 per cent. Colombia at 3.7 per cent, Ecuador and Honduras at 2.5 per cent, Nicaragua and Guatemala 2.0 per cent. Countries with notable declines in growth include Haiti projected to experience negative 8.5 per cent and Venezuela at negative growth 3.0 per cent.