BARBADOS' POULTRY SECTOR is "over-protected", a feature that inflates prices.

This assessment has been made by the Caribbean Policy Development Centre (CPDC), a local non-governmental organisation (NGO).

"We ran a cost of protection model which has shown quite effectively that right now the poultry sector in Barbados is over-protected," executive director Chris Sinckler told Caribbean poultry producers yesterday.

"For every one per cent increase in the level of price protection – that is, for tariff, tax or non-tariff barriers as in quotas – there is a two per cent corresponding increase in the price of the domestic product," he said.

Sinckler was addressing a meeting of the Caribbean Poultry Association (CPA) at the Sea Breeze Beach Hotel in Maxwell, Christ Church.

The meeting looked largely at the fallout in the Caribbean from the outbreak of Avian influenza (bird flu) in parts of the globe.

However, Sinckler focused on the Caribbean's negotiations with the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and Europe and the implications for the regional poultry industry.

While some argued for "copious levels of protection to ensure that we maintain our poultry industries", Caribbean countries needed to do "far more empirical work to determine what is the most appropriate level of protection that will allow our industries
to continue to survive and to function and to expand and grow", Sinckler argued.

They should avoid a "knee-jerk" reaction of calling for greater protection of the poultry industry whenever it was under pressure, he suggested.

"We have to be far more clinical because the empirical studies are showing now that in some countries in the Caribbean, we may have either a too high or misplaced level of protection," he added.
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