Banana trade negotiations at the WTO headquarters in Geneva remained delicately poised last night as representatives from African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries and Latin American nations attempted to reach agreement on the future of the EU's highly contentious banana import regime.
While the ACP countries say they will accept the WTO's proposed tariff level of €116 per tonne, they are demanding that this be applied not by 2015 as the WTO suggests but by 2020.
The Latin American producers, meanwhile, had said they would hold out for a tariff of €76 per tonne. However, a group of six Latin American countries – Costa Rica, Ecuador, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras and Panama – has also stated that a tariff level of €109 per tonne by 2015 with a quota of 200,000 tonnes would be acceptable.
With a day of scheduled discussions remaining, failure to settle the banana problem may jeopardise the Doha Round of talks, designed to forge a new global agreement on trade.
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