Fifteen years after Antigua and Barbuda won the World Trade Organisation (WTO) arbitration against the United States, Prime Minister Gaston Browne lamented that the nation is still waiting on the billions of dollars in damages yet to be paid.
Speaking at the recent United Nations General Assembly, Browne noted that the WTO is not a perfect mechanism in solving trade disputes. He added that the body cannot enforce its rulings, and Antigua and Barbuda continues to wait for an acceptable settlement.
“The U.S. economy is 20,000 times larger than Antigua and Barbuda’s. Compensation for the injury to my small country is less than 0.008 percent of one year of the U.S.’s [Gross Domestic Product] GDP. The injury that was done to my country now amounts to 20 percent of its GDP. No country can easily absorb that severe blow which hurts our economy, sets back our infrastructural development and constrain the provisions of employment and advances in health and education,” Browne said.
The prime minister said the ability of the people of his small island nation to survive this ordeal, while continuing to thrive, speaks volumes to their resilience.
