Guyana part of sugar mission to Brazil
-to dissuade challenge to EU regime
By Miranda La Rose
Stabroek News
February 6, 2003
Guyana will be part of an African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group mission headed for Brazil tomorrow and Saturday to argue against Brazil and Australia going further with a challenge to the European Union (EU) sugar regime.
Meanwhile the ACP countries are preparing a mission to Australia to express similar concerns on their challenge to the EU sugar regime which has offered a preferential market for ACP countries since 1975.
The Guyana delegation for the visit will include Minister of Foreign Trade and International Cooperation Clement Rohee; Guyana’s High Commissioner to Brazil, Cheryl Miles; Guyana’s former ambassador to the ACP and Guyana Sugar Corporation negotiator in London, Dr James Matheson and diplomat David Hales.
On the ACP team will be trade ministers and representatives of Mauritius, Fiji and Swaziland.
The team will be under the chairmanship of Mauritius minister with responsibility for international trade, Pravind Jugnauth who at a press briefing held at Colgrain House yesterday said the ACP hopes that the new government in Brazil would understand “our position and will act according to our expectation.”
The ACP countries feel that the action of Brazil and Australia, if they do succeed in their challenge and if they go before a World Trade Organisation Dispute Settlement Panel will pose tremendous harm to the ACP economies which represent just two percent of world exports of sugar.
While Brazil and Australia have repeatedly stated that they do not intend and would not attack the preferences that benefit the sugar supplying countries, Jugnauth said that by attacking the EU sugar regime they were attacking the Sugar Protocol which is intricately linked to the preferential market. Based on this contradiction, he said that the ACP countries would request Brazil to translate those assurances that have been given repeatedly into a concrete position so that preferences were maintained.
Rohee was encouraged that Brazil was open to dialogue and saw that as an indication that it wanted to accommodate the concerns of the ACP countries.
At a press briefing on Tuesday Dr Matheson said that even though Brazil and Australia had repeatedly assured the ACP that they intended no harm to the ACP preferential arrangements, he said that one only had to remember the case of Dominica and other economies that depended on bananas. They had also been given assurances, he added.
The main features of the challenge to the WTO, Dr Matheson said are the targeting of EU export subsidies for sugar and the payment of a subsidy in the form of an intervention price for refined EC sugar, which is not available to sugar imported from non-preferential sources.
He said the challenge would directly threaten the ACP since the regime provides a preferential market with special prices to the ACP under the Sugar Protocol and the Special Preferential Sugar Arrangement.
He explained that the price that ACP countries were paid for sugar exports to the EU was dependent on the European domestic price paid to beet farmers. He said one aspect was the question as to whether the European Union has been in line with its WTO commitments in terms of exports.
He warned that any change in the terms of the ACP/EU sugar agreements caused by a reduction in domestic beet prices in the EU, or a questioning of the EU’s right to re-export the ACP supply of 1.6 MT would result in both lower prices and possible lower quotas.
Dr Matheson said the challenge had passed through the first stage of a process - that of informal consultations between Brazil and Australia and the EU, with the ACP joining in as an interested party.
The next stage is dependent on whether the matter is referred to the legal level of a Dispute Settlement Panel. A major objective of the mission would therefore be to persuade Brazil to reconsider the referral to the panel.
