March 10, 2023
Is the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas (RTC) worthless? Can it actually perform the function that its founders set out for the Caribbean and that is to enhance the social and economic liberalisation and growth of the region? Well, we have our reservations on that.
If you read a few stories down you would see the story on how Trinidad won their discrimination case against Grenada, and Antigua and Barbuda on the matter of giving preferential treatment to their multinational company, CL Financial aka CLICO. Yes, the CLICO fiasco.
The Caribbean Court of Justice said that T&T were not giving preferential treatment to CLICO by allowing it to pay out its countries policy holders first when the insurance giant flopped and by extension allowing policy holders in other Caribbean jurisdictions to be left holding the bag and to this day still waiting on justice, which it seems may never happen.
The RTC was a core plank of Antigua and Grenada’s argument and in this case we saw how frail it is at actually providing for a framework it said it is best suited to protect. We cannot be serious as a region if we want to talk all of this big-shot talk but can’t back it up with protection.
Of course Trinidad were preferential to its policy holders. You would have to be a moron to think otherwise. However, it could not be proven otherwise by virtue of the RTC, which is a problem moving forward for any like-minded company like CL Financial was envisioned to be. This is a huge challenge for the RTC and an opportunity that should be taken up at the next CARICOM Heads of Government meeting.