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Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les says An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Prime Min­is­ter Gas­ton Browne’s sug­ges­tion that T&T may be in breach of the Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas should not be dis­missed.

At a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day at the of­fice of the Op­po­si­tion Leader on Charles Street, Port-of-Spain, Beck­les re­spond­ed to Browne’s re­cent con­cerns over the re­cent­ly an­nounced in­crease in im­port du­ties on se­lect­ed Cari­com prod­ucts by the T&T Gov­ern­ment.

The Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas is a sig­nif­i­cant re­gion­al agree­ment signed in 1973 that es­tab­lished the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty and Com­mon Mar­ket, al­so known as Cari­com. A re­vised treaty in 2001 es­tab­lished the Cari­com Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my (CSME), which is at the heart of Cari­com’s cur­rent eco­nom­ic in­te­gra­tion ef­forts.