Britain´s Chancellor of the Exchequer (Finance Minister), Alistair Darling, proposed increasing a tax that already impacts negatively the Caribbean economies, in particular the tourism industry, laments David Jessop, director of Caribbean Council.

The British Chancellor's decision, says Jessop, involves increasing significantly the Air Passenger Duty on all travellers buying an airline ticket in the UK to travel to the Caribbean and elsewhere, by requiring them to pay a tax based on the length of their journey and their class of travel.

The London-based consultancy head says the announcement is the latest in a long line of European decisions on trade, tariffs and taxation which now threaten almost every significant export industry in the Caribbean.

Over the last decade, Europe created the conditions for a perfect economic storm which hits the Caribbean at just the moment that a deep and prolonged global recession overtakes the regional economy, says Jessop.

The columnist, who is widely published in Caribbean media, explains that this occurs as Europe and Cariforum struggle to work out the new Economic Partnership Agreement that places emphasis on policies that reduce tariff-based revenues, and encourage investment and the export of manufactured goods and services.

The tax announced by Darling will increase progressively over the next two years, when it will be joined in 2010 by a European scheme that seeks to include aviation into the EU Emissions Trading Scheme involving the purchase of licences for all air transport operators to emit carbon.

The outcome of these short sighted policies, warns Jessop, is creating a paradox. By progressively diminishing the region's ability to trade in those goods and services that provide a stable underpinning and time to develop competitive

advantage, they are contributing to the unemployment, crime and instability and the broader problems that so concern them.

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