Calls for free trade deal between Commonwealth ‘asleep on its watch’

As Lord Jonathan Marland struggled up the steep hill to Robert Louis Stevenson’s grave in Apia earlier this week he found the inspiration for his speech to the business forum of the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Samoa.
Marland, the chair of the Commonwealth Enterprise and Business Forum is calling for a Commonwealth free trade deal between the 56 member nations that have a combined population of 2.6 billion and a combined GDP of more than NZ$13 trillion.
Without it, he says, the Commonwealth risks withering on the vine unless it finds real things that people can benefit from.
He describes the group of nations as too passive, a loose arrangement, and it needs to assert itself as competition to trading groups like BRICS, which is made up of heavyweights like Brazil, Russia, India and China.
To the audience of more than 250 people attending the business forum at the heavily guarded Sheraton Hotel in Apia, Marland said the time was right for a free trade deal, for Commonwealth countries to rise up and make use of the strong bond of business and trade.
Enough of the talking shop, he said, it was time for action. He said the appetite for trade was strong, pointing out that this week’s business forum was oversubscribed with people wanting to come to Apia from all over the world to talk trade and business.
“Why not start with a Commonwealth trade deal,” Marland said, turning to the Samoan Prime Minister Fiamē Naomi Mata’afa with the message: “I hope that under your great leadership that the Commonwealth does everything that it can to promote that as an issue.”
After regaling the audience with his experience of the 840m climb to the place Robert Louis Stevenson is buried in 38C degree heat, Marland talked about the Scottish novelist’s connection with Samoa.
After writing three of the 25 most successful books of all time (Treasure Island, Jekyll and Hyde, and Kidnapped) he decided to come to his own treasure island and lived in Apia for the last four years of his life.
The author’s old two-storey mansion is now a museum in Vailima Botanical Garden.
Like every forum and meeting at CHOGM this week the climate emergency is top of mind, whether it is talking about justice, deep sea mining or business.
It is in these forums, Marland said, where opportunities will be created for solving climate issues, and opportunities for the Commonwealth’s 1.5 billion young people under 30, who make up 60 percent of the population.
In an interview with The Guardian in 2017, Marland said he did not believe a free trade agreement was necessary. He believed the focus on free trade agreements had become a “media obsession” that hid the real issue that not enough small businesses were exporting.
Now he is saying it is time, in a world where old and existing relationships are under pressure, where China has successfully invested in many Commonwealth countries with its Belt and Road initiative, “while many Commonwealth countries were asleep on their watch”.
“It’s time, a bit belatedly, that many Commonwealth countries rise up and recognise the alliance of Commonwealth countries through business and trade is a very strong bond.”
This week in Apia, Marland told Newsroom he was quoted out of context in The Guardian and had always supported free trade but that it would take time with 56 countries.
The former Conservative government minister says a trading bloc should have been set up years ago.
“Why are we not utilising this network for banding ourselves together? We’ve seen things like Aukus happen which banded together certain Commonwealth countries with America.”
Marland says BRICS has a waiting list of countries to join the group and he finds it extraordinary that member countries are in Russia now holding talks on trade and investment.
“Two major Commonwealth countries are there. Why are they not here? It’s because it’s more compelling for them to go there.”
The trade agreement could start with larger Commonwealth countries including New Zealand, Australia, Malaysia, UK, Canada, Rwanda and Botswana and allow other countries to join when they are ready.
Marland says the African Free Trade Agreement was set up within almost a year.
“It would not be possible to get 56 countries to sign up to a free trade agreement now but over time I would hope that they subscribe to it.”
Asked whether Chogm meant more than a meet and greet of NGOs and political leaders, Marland said the business forum was the only opportunity for some countries to network.
“Take Cameroon. They recognise as a nation that not everyone’s flocking to Cameroon, they’ve got a lot of opportunity, they’ve got a lot of investment needs, a lot of needs as a country and the only way they’re going to do it is to come to events like this and meeting people who can help with that.
“For places like Samoa, a man who has built 30 or 40 places in the Maldives is here. Has already been around yesterday scoping potential opportunities for putting a resort in. That would then lift the resorts here because his are Aman Hotels, very high end.
“He was just talking to the Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbada.
“It’s about opportunity.” 
As for a free trade deal, Marland says it is up to the political leaders to make the decision.
He would not count on it as his greatest achievement in the role.
“I’ve become very skeptical of a lot of governments and their commitment to the Commonwealth.”
At the business forum on Wednesday, Marland rounded off his speech with another reference to Robert Louis Stevenson saying that everyone wanted Samoa to triumph in its two years as chair in office at the Commonwealth, to triumph as a nation economically, as a treasured island and a great country.