Hillary Deveaux, chairman of the FTAA’s Services Negotiating Group, yesterday said the momentum driving the Hemisphere-wide free trade agreemnet may be losing the battle for acceptance because of misinformation being planted by globalisation detractors.
He said a concerted effort from the 34 participating countries and FTAA Secretariat was needed to bring some balance in educating civil society on the FTAA if governments were to explain the content and purpose of the agreement to their people.
Mr. Deveaux, who is executive director of the Securities Commission of the Bahamas said that although the FTAA seemed to have captured the intellectual curiosity of civil society throughout the western hemisphere, little or no information appeared to be coming from most of the participating countries’ governments to help prepare the average citizen for such an undertaking and explain what implications the proposed treaty had for them individually.
By Yolanda Deleveaux, The Tribune
