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September 2026

Panama Canal Restrictions Put Up to US$10 Billion of CARICOM Imports at Risk, CPSO Warns

By CARICOM, news, Press Release, pressrelease, TradeNo Comments

Bridgetown, Barbados — Between US$8 billion and US$10 billion of the Caribbean Community’s (CARICOM’s) annual imports, roughly one quarter to one third of the Region’s non-fuel import bill are exposed to the transit restrictions now taking effect at the Panama Canal, according to preliminary analysis by the CARICOM Private Sector Organization (CPSO). The CPSO is advising importers and governments to plan for higher landed costs and thinner inventories through the 2027 dry season.

The Panama Canal Authority’s Advisory A-29-2026 caps daily transits at 34 vessels for booking dates from 4 September, falling to 32 from 15 September. Rainfall in the canal watershed has run 34% below the historical average from May through August, with inflows 44% below. The Authority has warned that the expected intensity of the 2026 to 2027 El Niño could further reduce water availability during the next dry season, from January to April 2027.

The cost signals are already visible. A priority auction slot recently fetched US$5.3 million, reported as the highest bid ever recorded, and CMA CGM, MSC and Hapag-Lloyd have each announced per-TEU surcharges on canal-dependent routes, with further increases expected as draft limits tighten.

“Auction premiums and low-water surcharges do not stay on the carriers’ books,” said Dr. Patrick Antoine, CEO and Technical Director of the CPSO. “They are passed down the chain to importers, to distributors, and ultimately to the Caribbean consumer. When slot scarcity forces carriers to reroute or rationalise port calls, small Caribbean markets are typically the first to lose frequency and the last to regain it.”

CARICOM economies are among the most import-dependent in the world. Food, manufactured goods and construction inputs reach regional shelves largely on transshipment networks routed through or priced off the Panama Canal. The CPSO estimate covers both cargo transiting the Canal directly, between US$4.5 billion and US$7 billion a year, and Canal-transited cargo consolidated through United States ports before onward shipment to the Region. The risk to consumers is twofold: availability, through longer lead times and thinner inventories; and price, as surcharges and longer voyages feed into landed costs.

The Canal is not the only constraint. With shipping through the Strait of Hormuz also disrupted, two of the world’s critical maritime trade corridors are under pressure simultaneously, one by climate and one by conflict, lifting freight rates, war-risk premiums and fuel costs globally. For petroleum-importing CARICOM states, that compounds pressure on electricity, transport and food prices at the same time.

The CPSO presented its Derisking CSME Imports methodology to the CARICOM Heads of Government Breakfast Meeting in Saint Lucia in July 2026. The framework maps the Community’s exposure to extra-regional supply shocks and identifies, product by product, where intra-regional production and alternative supply corridors can substitute for vulnerable long-haul imports.

“Every percentage point of import demand we can shift to regional supply is a percentage point insulated from canal auctions, low-water surcharges and chokepoint conflict,” Dr. Antoine said. “Regional resilience is not built during a crisis. It is built before one.”

The CPSO is urging importers to engage carriers and logistics providers now on routing, surcharge exposure and inventory planning for the fourth quarter of 2026 and the 2027 dry season. The Organisation continues to advance the Region’s connectivity agenda with CARICOM Heads of Government,   the World Bank’s Caribbean Reconnect Programme, and support to the Regional Ferry Service initiative now before Heads.

 

About the CARICOM Private Sector Organization:

The CARICOM Private Sector Organization (CPSO) is the most recently accredited Associate Institution of the Caribbean Community. The CPSO is a ‘Service Organization’ to mobilize and advance private sector participation in CARICOM, with a mandate to contribute to the full implementation of the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME). The Membership of the CPSO is comprised of private sector entities operating in the CARICOM space, including Micro, Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (MSMEs).

For media enquiries, please contact:

The CPSO Secretariat Email: info@thecpso.org | website: www.thecpso.org

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September 9, 2026

CPSO Celebrates Africa-CARICOM Day 2026

By Africa Union-CARICOM Trade, Areas of Work, CARICOM, Press Release, pressreleaseNo Comments

Bridgetown, Barbados — The CARICOM Private Sector Organization (CPSO) joins the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), the African Union, and the people of Africa and the Caribbean in commemorating Africa-CARICOM Day 2026, celebrating the deep historical and cultural bonds between our peoples while reaffirming our commitment to transforming those bonds into enduring economic partnerships.

For the CPSO, this Day carries particular significance.

Over the past year, the CPSO, together with the Africa Business Council, the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) and the International Trade Centre, has worked to identify and advance concrete opportunities for the people and businesses of our Regions on both sides of the Atlantic. Our combined efforts have brought businesses from both Regions together to examine real opportunities to build greater economic resilience, expand South-South trade and investment, and diversify our markets and supply chains.

In agribusiness sector, CPSO research has identified approximately US$322 million in potential trade opportunities between the two Regions. At the same time, emerging collaboration in areas including agriculture and agro-processing, beauty and fashion, technology, intellectual property, finance and business services demonstrates that the possibilities extend well beyond the movement of commodities.

As we continue to examine markets, identify partners, and confront practical barriers such as limited direct maritime and air connectivity and regulatory fragmentation, sustained engagement will be critical. Deepening business-to-business matchmaking, investment facilitation, and capacity building, particularly for MSMEs, women, and young entrepreneurs, will ensure these opportunities convert into meaningful economic outcomes.

These developments are occurring alongside Afreximbank’s expanded US$5 billion commitment to the Caribbean and ongoing work to strengthen the financial, payment, transport and institutional infrastructure necessary to support deeper trade and investment between our Regions.

Africa-CARICOM Day therefore gives us an opportunity not only to celebrate where we have come from, but to consider what we are now building together.

Our shared history connects us, but it is our shared interests that will continue to give us reason to cooperate, while the institutions we build, the investments we make, the businesses we connect and the opportunities we convert into measurable outcomes will determine the strength of the Africa-CARICOM relationship for generations to come.

The CPSO remains committed to working with our partners across Africa and the Caribbean Community to translate the political ambition of Africa-CARICOM cooperation into expanded trade, stronger businesses, more resilient supply chains, investment and sustainable economic opportunities for our people. 

Happy Africa-CARICOM Day.

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September 7, 2026

CPSO Welcomes OAS Private Sector Initiative of the Americas, Calls for CARICOM to Be Built In at the Design Stage

By CARICOM, news, Press Release, pressrelease, Tariffs, Trade, US-CARICOM TradeNo Comments

OAS Private Sector Initiative of the Americas
Statement on Behalf of the CARICOM Private Sector

Dr. Patrick Antoine | CEO and Technical Director, CARICOM Private Sector Organization
Thursday, 3 September 2026

Secretary General Ramdin, Chair Bulgheroni, Distinguished Colleagues,

In the Caribbean, we do not debate whether prosperity and peace are connected. We live it.

When a single hurricane can erase a year’s GDP overnight; when one disrupted shipping lane raises the price of food on every shelf in fifteen countries; when correspondent banks withdraw and the cost of simply moving money climbs; when our economies import what we could grow, ships bypass ports we could connect to, and pay energy costs designed for continents not islands, the distance between an economic shock and a social crisis is measured in weeks, not years.

Prosperity, for small states, is not the reward of stability. It is the condition for it.

That is why the CARICOM Private Sector Organization (CPSO) embraces this Initiative, and why we come to this table not with requests, but with work already in motion.

Six weeks ago, the CPSO stood before the Heads of Government of CARICOM and presented our Derisking CSME Imports methodology for unshackling trade potential: hard data mapping exactly where our Community is exposed to external supply shocks, and exactly how enabling intra-regional trade corridors can close those gaps.

Not a study for a shelf. Approaches to meeting the grinding challenge of affordability, tools being used now, and a model that could scale across this hemisphere, where intra-regional trade, as the Panama dialogue rightly diagnosed, remains far below its potential.

Our Heads of Government are advancing a Regional Ferry Service to finally stitch our islands together by sea. With development partners, we are addressing high maritime transport and trade costs, food security gaps, and non-tariff barriers that operate as a hidden tax on every
Caribbean household. And at the International Maritime Organization, the CPSO is collaborating with CARICOM Member States to ensure that global shipping’s energy transition does not arrive as a bill that small, fuel-importing economies cannot pay.

De-risking trade. Connectivity. A just energy transition. These are not aspirations. They are CARICOM’s answer, already underway, to the very question this Initiative poses.

So our submission is direct.

First: build CARICOM in at the design stage. Fifteen Member States. A single market. A private sector organised and ready. We are not a footnote to a Latin American conversation. We are a distinct constituency, with distinct exposure, and with solutions already tested at the level of our Heads of Government.

Second: as the 120-day Action Agenda takes shape, let it carry measurable commitments on the three fronts I have named, and let those commitments reach the micro, small and medium enterprises that make up the overwhelming majority of firms in our region. An Agenda that works for the most vulnerable economies, and the smallest firms, in this hemisphere will, by definition, work for all of them.

Third: use what exists. Give the private sector a standing seat in this Initiative, not an episodic one. And enable our sustained participation!

Our CPSO brings data, methodology, and a mandate from our Community. We are not asking this Initiative to invent the Caribbean’s priorities. We are offering to deliver them, together.

The Secretary General has said that prosperity is an investment in peace.

In the Caribbean, we would add only this: nowhere in the Americas will that investment yield a higher return.

Thank you.

September 5, 2026
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