by Linda Straker
Grenada is ranked 51st in the global 2014 “Doing Business: Trading Across Borders” report — 2nd within the OECS, and 3rd within Caricom.
This was disclosed by Comptroller of Customs, Carlyle Felix, who explained that Grenada was ranked at 61 and 71 in the previous two years. “We at Customs have been working tirelessly to bring about improvement in the system and now its about continuous improvement,” he said.
According to the global ranking, previously released in June 2014, St Vincent and the Grenadines are 45th; St Kitts and Nevis are 67th; Dominica is at 88; Antigua and Barbuda are 89th while St Lucia is at 122. “Based on that ranking we are ranked second in the OECS and third in Caricom,” Felix said. Barbados is ranked at 38th in the global ranking.
The Doing Business: Trading Across Borders, measures the time and cost (excluding tariffs) associated with exporting and importing a standardized cargo of goods by sea transport. The time and cost necessary to complete 4 predefined stages (document preparation; customs clearance and inspections; inland transport and handling; and port and terminal handling) for exporting and importing the goods are recorded; however, the time and cost for sea transport are not included. All documents needed by the trader to export or import the goods across the border are also recorded.
“The ranking of economies on the ease of trading across borders is determined by sorting their distance to frontier scores for trading across borders. These scores are the simple average of the distance to frontier scores for each of the component indicators,” stated in the report, which is published on the doingbusiness.org website.
Felix said that the Customs department will continue to make improvements in its operation with the sole aim of providing excellent service to customers simultaneously improving the island’s position with future reports.
