News

Appointment of New Commissioners to the CCC

PRESS RELEASE

 January 30, 2017

APPOINTMENT OF NEW COMMISSIONERS TO THE CARICOM COMPETITION COMMISSION

The CARICOM Competition Commission (CCC) is pleased to announce the appointment of two new Commissioners, Professor Andrew Downes and Mrs. Emalene Marcus-Burnett effective January 06, 2017. The Commissioners were sworn in by Sir Dennis Byron, Chairman of the Regional Judicial and Legal Services Commission (RJLSC), and witnessed by Dr. Kusha Haraksingh, Chairman of the CCC.

The incoming Commissioners have been appointed for a term of five years in the first instance. They join sitting Commissioners, Chairman Dr. Kusha Haraksingh; Mr. Patterson Keith Herman Cheltenham, G.C.M., Q.C; Mr. Hans Rudolf Lim A Po; Mr. Eversley Decourcey and Mr. Nestor Alfred.

The CCC was established to help enforce the CARICOM Rules of Competition and to regulate competition in the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME). Its principle functions are to apply the rules of competition, promote competition, and to assist Member States to protect consumers.

Professor Andrew Downes was appointed to the Barbados Fair Trading Commission at its inception in 2001, and became Deputy Chairman in 2006. He served as a member of the telecommunications and fair competition/consumer protection panels. An economist and academic by profession, Professor Downes was the Director of the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies (SALISES), at the University of the West Indies(UWI), Cave Hill Campus, Barbados and  Pro Vice Chancellor for Planning and Development at the UWI.             He is a graduate of the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill in Barbados, where he attained both a Bachelor of Science in Economics and a Master of Science in Economics. He is also a graduate of the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom where he attained a Doctorate in Economics. He is a Fellow of the World Academy of Productivity Science and a Research Associate of the Caribbean Centre for Money and Finance.
Professor Downes was an Advisor to the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery. He has also served as the Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Head of the Department of Economics at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, as well as the Chairman of the Cave Hill Campus Research Fund. He has been a member of the Board of the Central Bank of Barbados, a director of the Barbados Port Authority and Chairman of the National Productivity Council. He has served as the Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Caribbean Centre for Monetary Studies and a member of the Regional Advisory Group of the Western Hemisphere of the IMF. He is the author of several publications and reports on Caribbean development issues.

Commissioner Emalene Marcus-Burnett holds a BSc. in Economics and Accounting from the University of the West Indies, a MSc. in Financial Economics and an LLM in International Trade Law from the University of London. Her areas of study included Competition Law and Investment Law.
Mrs. Marcus-Burnett has been involved in agriculture policy formulation and analysis, and has extensive experience in trade negotiations, having been involved in, inter alia, the agricultural negotiations under the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and multilateral trade negotiations under the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Mrs. Marcus-Burnett has served as WTO Chair of the Committee on Agriculture (Regular Session) and Rapporteur of the International Labor Organization (ILO) Committee on Youth Unemployment.