The Caribbean Banana Exporter's Association (CBEA) has hit out atproposed cuts in EU banana tariff preferences forAfrican-Caribbean-Pacific (ACP) countries, which could be a result ofEuropean Commission Free Trade Agreement (FTA) negotiations with LatinAmerican nations.
Cuts to the tariff preference would make it 'no longer possible' forbanana exporters in the Caribbean to survive, the CBEA claimed, withthe first tariff reduction potentially taking place on 1 January 2009.
'The nightmare is now becoming harsh reality,' said the group in astatement. 'All the fine words about the benefit of EPAs (Europeanpreferential trade agreements) for Caribbean and other ACP countriesare now revealed as a snare and a delusion – at least as far as thebanana trade is concerned.'
ACP countries had agreed to a reduction in the tariff preferenceduring the aborted Doha Round of negotiations that took place earlierthis year, but only as part of a wider tariff reduction agreement byall WTO members on a range of goods, not just bananas.
'Moreover, the ACP countries were cajoled into agreeing to thesereductions by promises of an aid programme designed to facilitateimprovements in productivity and to help those forced out of businessby the tariff reductions,' the CBEA continued. 'Even that compensationis no longer on offer in connection with the current FTA negotiations.
'TheEC treatment of ACP bananas under the EPA may give rise to very seriousconsideration of the balance of benefit from these arrangements,' thegroup noted. 'Certainly, no-one in the banana export trade imagined atthe time the EPA was agreed that its benefits to them would be sodrastically eroded in so short a period of time.'
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