Caribbean sugar exporters reject EU reform proposals
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| Published on Saturday, May 5, 2007 |
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NADI, Fiji, (AFP): Sugar producing countries have rejected the European Unions plan to cut preferential prices for their exports to Europe.
Sugar exporting members of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries -- mostly former colonies of EU nations -- met in Fiji this week to draw up a response to the EU's reform proposals.
To comply with World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules, the EU wants to reform the sugar protocol and slash preferred prices, currently about three times world market levels, paid to ACP countries by 36 percent over the next three years.
The chairman of the ACP meeting, Mauritius Sugar Minister Arvin Boolell said Thursday the EU's plans "sent shivers down our spine.
"We have to make sure that under no circumstances should the sanctity of the sugar protocol be put at risk," Boolell told reporters at the end of the 4-day meeting.
"They (the EU) have legal, political and historical obligations (that) they have to honour and have to comply with."
The ACP countries argue their economies are too fragile to withstand a sharp fall in sugar prices offered by the EU, which has offered funds to help the affected countries' sugar industries become more competitive.
The EU also wants to set up economic partnership agreements (EPA) with the ACP countries, which would reduce trade and investment barriers in most products.
The ACP countries said the EU had promised no ACP country would be worse off under the EPAs than under previous trade deals.
But Irish economist Dr Stephen Thornhill, in a study commissioned by the ACP countries, said they would be better off if the sugar protocol was retained as part of any EPA deal, rather than being replaced by it. | | | | Reads : 507 | | | |
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