BELIZE GETS ADDITIONAL EUROPEAN SUGAR QUOTA

March 20, 2007

Ministers of the African Caribbean and Pacific countries met in Brussels last week. Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade Eamon Courtney led Belize’s delegation. Love News spoke today with Minister Courtney.

Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade Eamon Courtney

"We export sugar to the European Union primarily under quota, they are countries who are parties to what we call the sugar protocol who are each given a quota allocation. Our quota is about 45 thousand tons and when a country is unable to supply its amount under that protocol then it is re-allocated to other members of the sugar protocol. They are times when a country cannot do it for one year and that’s a temporary short fall and they are others when they are structural which means they permanently can’t supply. In the case of St. Kitts, St Kitts took a decision last year to go out of sugar which gave up about 15,590 tons or there about of sugar and therefore now all the members of the sugar protocol, African, Caribbean and Pacific Countries starting jacking and claiming there right to get that protocol. We in the Caribbean to that decision both at the Heads of Government level as well as the Ministers Level that we should learn to fight to get all of that sugar protocol for the Caribbean and specifically to spread it on a fifty, fifty basis for Guyana and Belize. We have been doing that for over the past year in meetings around the world and different places by letters, lobbying and things in Europe. Finally we had a meeting last week in Brussels with our colleagues from the ACP and we had quiet a stormy meeting but at the end we stood our grounds and our lobby efforts have now paid off and they have eventually agreed that Belize and Guyana can shared the 15,000 or about 16,000 tons they can share it, and so now we have an additional 20% of our quota for export to the European Unions. So for the farmers and for BSI this is an excellent move we have gotten more market security, we have gotten market at a higher price and it is very good for Belize sugar. What now happens is that the ACP Secretariat in Brussels will notify the European Union officially that there have been a decision that all those should go to Belize and Guyana and that becomes effective in the next year which is the up coming year which we will produce in excess of our 45 thousand we will be able to send in more under the St. Kitts protocol, so that will come into effect immediately.

Minister Courtney said they also held an informal dialogue with European Union Development Ministers.

Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade Eamon Courtney

“We also went to Bond Germany where we were invited by the Minister of Development of the European Commission and we had an informal dialogue with them. As you know Belize along with all the members of the ACP are negotiating what we call Economic Partnership Agreement. These are the agreement under which we will have a trade and development regime between the European Union and our region in our case with the Caribbean. That’s a very important thing, all our trade with the European Union are determine under the quota agreement which will now be succeeded by the CPA.This has to come to an end it has to be agreed and negotiated by the end of this year, because the waiver we had with the WGO expired at the end of this year. The negotiations are at a critical stage we have a number of outstanding issues and services market access, tariffs the configuration of CARIFORUM, the configuration of countries that can make commitments etc. We were invited by the Ministers who are responsible for the development dimension of this agreement to have an informal dialogue with them so they can hear the decision we articulated and we could hear there response. It’s a very important meeting because we lay out for them the difficulties Caribbean is having with some of the decisions taken by the European Union and we were able to share with them what we regard as our red line issues on which we will not budge and to share with them whether there is a possibility of some movement on our side. The negotiations as I said are at a critical stage and this was a very important meeting because one of the things we are insisting on is significant development funding in order to compensate us for the adjustment that we are undergoing with respect to the European Union and there move to more market orientation more liberal trade regime and so it was important to explain to the Minister what we are expecting from them and how we see the need for immediate funds to be paid to us and for the medium and long term.”

Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade Eamon Courtney. The Belize delegation included Ambassador Alexis Rosado, Trade Economist Venetia Eck and B-S-I Chairman Barry Newton.

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