Caricom scotches rice safeguard mechanism
Suriname objects to Jamaica paddy deal
By Miranda La Rose
Stabroek News
May 30, 2003
Caricom has decided against a mechanism to safeguard the rice industry - critical for Guyana - because it is WTO-incompatible.
And in another blow for local producers, Suriname is seeking to block a paddy agreement which allows Guyana to export 65,000 tons of rice to Jamaica because it was not a part of the deal. These developments were among the key issues at yesterday’s meeting of the Caricom Council for Trade and Economic Development (COTED) in Georgetown.
The long hoped for safeguard mechanism to protect regional rice producers against imported rice was scotched by Caricom officials after it was considered incompatible with World Trade Organisation (WTO) regulations.
This is despite President of the Caribbean Rice Association, Beni Sankar, predicting that the future of rice markets in Caricom was very bleak with the flood of extra regional imports mainly from subsidised US farmers. Only last week the Guyana Rice Producers Association had accused Caricom of ‘pussyfooting’ on protecting the industry and putting in jeopardy the region’s food security.
The decision against the safeguard mechanism came even as Assistant Caricom Secretary-General Byron Blake lamented the US$2.7B regional food import bill which he said was rising rapidly.
Speaking at the opening of the COTED meeting he said the region must become more self-sufficient and assist its troubled industries.
Meanwhile, fellow Cari-com member Suriname is seeking to overturn the Guyana/Jamaica paddy agreement and raised the issue at the working session of the COTED meeting being held at Le Meridien Pegasus. Suriname says it was not provided for in the agreement.
Guyana’s Minister of Agriculture Navin Chandarpal told Stabroek News yesterday that whether this would be discussed would be another issue as the agenda was a packed one and kept changing.
Prior to the opening of the COTED meeting yesterday morning, Sankar told Stabroek News that the paddy agreement had been discussed between Guyana and Suriname with Minister of Foreign Trade and International Co-operation, Clement Rohee as one of the chief negotiators.
The genesis of the agreement was Jamaica’s imports of duty-free rice from the US which he said was also being sold in Trinidad putting the local industry in jeopardy. Guyana and Suriname then contended that they had the capacity to meet the region’s demand for rice.
Negotiations had taken place in Georgetown and originally included Suriname but were concluded in Trinidad in February with the signing of the agreement between Guyana and Jamaica.
Sankar said the CRA and local industry representatives were unaware of the negotiations and the agreements reached in Trinidad. Minister of Foreign Affairs, Rudy Insanally signed the agreement.
Yet in spite of that agreement, Sankar said Jamaica was taking very little rice. He said traditional Jamaican buyers were not interested in buying, claiming that they were getting rice at a cheaper price.
Guyana was also losing markets for packaged rice which it had built up in Jamaica over the past five years, Sankar said.
As for the safeguard mechanism to protect regional rice producers Sankar said that during the meeting of officials and representatives of the industry, Caricom officials decided they were not going with the safeguard mechanism because they saw it as “a waste of time.” The industry producers, he said, asked for a 40% increase on the Common External Tariff (CET) but “they said they were not going with that” either, Sankar reported. The safeguard mechanism would have allowed the CET to fluctuate according to the price on the world market. He said the officials had concluded that the safeguard mechanism was not WTO-compatible. But Sankar said it should have been possible given the fact that pork producers in the region had been granted similar safeguard mechanisms.
He also questioned the assistance being provided by the European Union stating that they were giving the region’s producers money (EU20M) to make the industry competitive “because they want to keep us out of Europe.”
