Updates

Boosting Caribbean trade intelligence

15 August 2022
ITC News

New Export Potential Map for the Caribbean Forum (CARIFORUM) to increase intra-regional trade and help take advantage of trade agreements

Over the last few years, the Caribbean has been one of the most vigorous regions in the endeavour to equip organizations with assets for business development and exports. With support from UK Aid and with the technical assistance of the International Trade Centre (ITC), an online resource for trade intelligence has just been launched to support the private sector.

On 10 August 2022 in the presence of over 70 representatives of Caribbean business support organizations, the CARIFORUM Directorate and the International Trade Centre officially launched the Export Potential Map CARIFORUM. 

“This is an action to support the private sector to benefit from existing and future trade agreements and to increase the participation of the Caribbean into the global economy,” said Alexis Downes-Amsterdam, Director General of CARIFORUM during her opening remarks for the event.

The Export Potential Map is one of ITC’s flagship tools for market analysis that estimates market growth and diversification opportunities for any of a country’s export product within a matter of seconds.

The tool also identifies options for product diversification and their chances of export success across world markets. Its economic model pulls in information on trade, tariffs, GDP, population forecasts, elasticities, distances, and other variables to determine the potential level of trade a country can reach for each of its export products in different potential markets during the next five years.

Export Potential Map’s data-driven perspective has been supporting research, strategy and policy making in international business for the past five years, attracting over 100,000 users each year.

The tool’s tailored version for the CARIFORUM features a customized interface focusing on the export potential of 15 CARICOM countries to the world as well as analyses opportunities for intra-regional trade.

“Thanks to the support from UK Aid and the close interaction with the CARIFORUM Directorate, we have been able to finetune this first-ever regional version of Export Potential Map to the specific needs of the region to observe and compare export potential in goods and services,” said Julia Spies, Head of trade data, tools and analysis at ITC.

About the project

The technical assistance from the International Trade Centre was delivered to CARIFORUM under the United Kingdom Trade Partnership (UKTP) Programme financed by the British Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office FCDO.