Caribbean

Commonwealth Countries of the Caribbean: Few Facts

There are 10 Commonwealth Countries in the Caribbean region. While nine of them are members of the WTO, the Bahamas is in the process of accession.

In terms of Human Development Index (HDI) ranks, five countries rank among the highly developed countries on the HDI standards, while four countries rank among the medium level of developed countries.  Trade to GDP ratio, which provides an insight into the trade openness of the specific countries, has St. Lucia at the highest with 127.3% and the Bahamas at the lowest in the region with 95.1%. Average Trade to GDP ratio of the countries of this region is 111.3% with least intra-region variation of 9.62% as compared to other regions.

The annual GDP growth rate for countries of this region fall between 2.5% - 5% with the exception of Grenada (0.9%) and Trinidad and Tobago (11.9%) which are countries with lowest and highest GDP growth rates respectively in this region.

Almost all the countries of this region have tourism based service economies. In most of these countries, the contribution to GDP from Services sector ranges from about 50% to 90%. Trinidad and Tobago has about 58% contribution from industrial sector with rest coming from services and just 0.7% contribution from agriculture. These island countries have relatively little contribution from agriculture (ranging from highest 17% in Dominica to 0.7% in Trinidad and Tobago) to their economy as compared to other regions of the Commonwealth countries.

Export basket of the region for most of the countries contains items like vegetables & fruits, bananas, cocoa, coconut oil, rum, animal and animal products, clothing and apparels, chemicals etc. Few countries like Trinidad and Tobago, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Jamaica and St. Kitts also export items like petroleum products, minerals and fuels, manufactures, machinery and transport equipment, steel products, fertilizer and electrical components. 
Imports in most of these countries consist of foodstuff, machinery and transportation equipments, chemicals, manufactured and consumer goods.

Share in world merchandise exports is nil for most of the countries. Jamaica and Bahamas have share of 0.01% and Trinidad and Tobago is best placed with a share of 0.09%. Share in world services exports is better for most countries compared to their share in merchandise (exception is Trinidad and Tobago which has better share of merchandise exports 0.09% as compared to services exports of 0.03%) and varies from nil to 0.1% (Bahamas) owing to tourism.

Table 1: WTO, Trade-GDP Ratio and HDI Status of the
Caribbean Commonwealth Members

^{* Ratio is taken for the period 2003-05 unless otherwise mentioned.
** Observer status is regarded as accession in process.}