The European Commission has reportedly made a fresh offer to Latin American countries to lower its controversial banana import tariff in an apparent bid to settle the long-running dispute between the two sides.
The proposal is said to advocate a gradual lowering of the tariff for the entry of Latin American bananas into the European Union from its current €176 per tonne, according to news agency EFE.
Although the new offer reportedly has “as its base” an agreement made between the two sides in Geneva in July last year during the failed Doha round of global trade talks, EC sources said that it was different in content and would start at a later date.
However, a Latin America source told the agency that the new offer was “substantially removed” from the original agreement, which would have seen the tariff lowered to €148 per tonne this year, falling to €114 per tonne by 2016.
The EC source told EFE that the revised proposal, if implemented, would see a three-phase reduction in the tariff – from €176 per tonne to €148 per tonne this year, followed by a lowering to €143 per tonne in 2010 and a final reduction to €136 per tonne in 2011.
The apparent new offer comes in the wake of a fresh complaint to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) by Ecuador over the banana import regime. The present system imposes an customs tax on bananas from outside Europe’s former African, Caribbean and Pacific colonies.
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