BRIDGETOWN, Barbados - The latest ministerial meeting of the Caribbean Community's Council for Trade and Economic Development (COTED) has concluded in Guyana with at least four member states expressing strong disagreements over the region's vital trade regime. Grenada and St Vincent and the Grenadines have complained against unfair treatment by some countries, Antigua and Barbuda in particular, in their export of wheaten flour. Guyana and Suriname, on the other hand, continue to stress their discontent at the erosion of their regional rice market by discriminatory treatment in favour of external imports of this commodity. Ministers were returning to their respective capitals yesterday after some sharp exchanges during the 20th COTED ministerial at the Community Secretariat headquarters, as well as at informal and bilateral sessions on the rims of the one-day ministerial. Guyana, Caricom's single biggest producer and exporter of rice and sugar, has now threatened to refer its problems in the intra-regional marketing of its rice to the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), which has original and binding jurisdiction on settlement of trade disputes. However, the issue will only go to the CCJ if existing dispute settlement mechanisms under Caricom's revised treaty fail to produce desired results in the application of the Common External Tariff (CET). Guyana claims the CET is being breached by at least five countries: Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Belize, Grenada and Jamaica. At the start of the COTED meeting on Thursday, Guyana's Minister for Foreign Trade and International Co-operation, Clement Rohee, made a formal proposal for "compensation" by countries that have knowingly breached the rules governing the suspension of the CET. For their part, both Grenada and St Vincent and the Grenadines had earlier made specific representations to the Antigua and Barbuda government for circumventing an arrangement to give priority in the purchase of flour manufactured within the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) by importing supplies instead from outside the sub-region. St Vincent and the Grenadines, in particular, stands to lose approximately one quarter of its traditional flour exports within the OECS sub-region from Antigua and Barbuda's purchase of the commodity from Trinidad and Tobago. Vincentian Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves and his Antiguan counterpart, Baldwin Spencer, have been in contact on their flour trading dispute over the past two days. Caricom Secretary General Edwin Carrington, at the formal opening of the COTED meeting, reminded states that: "Operations of the trade in goods regime and its many component parts occupy an important place on our agenda today. It (the trade regime) is the bread and butter, or should I say the rice and beans of our arrangements. We need to ensure that it functions like a well-oiled machinery." With unresolved trade disputes outstanding at the close of the meeting, and now to be referred to next month's Inter-Sessional Meeting of Caricom Heads of Government in Port-of-Spain, the trade regime stands in need of "some urgent oiling", according to some of the participating ministers and officials. Reprinted from jamaicaobserver.com