The trade of goods and services and theinflows from Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) representlarge proportions of their Gross Domestic Products (GDP),especially in English Speaking Caribbean (ESC) countries.Therefore, the proper functioning of the channels thatconnect them to the rest of the world, including customsoffices, is essential to the performance of their economies.This note shows that, despite integration into the worldeconomy, customs performance in the Caribbean countries iscomparatively low. This note presents data from the CustomsAssessment Trade Toolkit (CATT), which provides empiricalevidence that processes do not meet adequate standards interms of speed, predictability and transparency. Thisinconsistency is partially explained by the lack of aneffective complementarity between the use of Information andCommunication Technologies (ICT) systems and the actualoperational practices. This policy note is organized asfollows: section three presents evidence on the economicprofile of the Caribbean countries to show high integrationto the world economy. Trade and FDI are they key aspectsbeing considered in this regard. Section four discusses therole of customs systems for economic development. Itanalyzes the performance of the Caribbean customs offices ina number of aspects (clearance times, predictability, andtransparency) that the literature has identified as criticalto promote competitiveness and development. Section fiveexpands this analysis by focusing on how the use of ICT canimprove customs performance in those aspects. Section sixsummarizes the lessons learned by the analysis of thesedata. Finally, the conclusions section presents some policyrecommendations to deal with the inconsistency between higheconomic openness and low customs performance in theCaribbean countries.
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