President, CARICOM colleagues meet with British PM
Guyana Chronicle
December 3, 2003
GINA -- President Bharrat Jagdeo and several of his CARICOM colleagues met this morning with British Prime Minister Tony Blair at 10 Downing Street, London.
The leaders met for about an hour, discussing a number of issues of concern to CARICOM and the UK. These included security, economic cooperation, preferential access to the European market and specific areas of cooperation between CARICOM and the UK. The breakfast meeting was held at the invitation of Prime Minister Blair.
President Jagdeo later in the day met with the UK Secretary of State for International Affairs, Baroness Valerie Amos. This meeting addressed a number of matters pertinent to Guyana-UK relations.
The Guyanese Head of State will meet with officials of the UK Department for International Development (DFID) today. DFID supports a number of developmental projects in Guyana.
President Jagdeo will later in the day travel on to Abuja, Nigeria, for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Conference.
A release from the CARICOM Secretariat says the meeting in London also centered on how to restart the stalled WTO negotiations following their collapse in Cancun, Mexico, and the upcoming negotiations for a Regional Partnership Agreement (REPA) between the European Union (EU) and Caribbean countries. Both are party to the ACP/EU Cotonou Agreement.
Cognizant of the consequences of reform of the 'Banana Regime', CARICOM Heads expressed grave concern regarding the upcoming reforms of the EU Sugar Regime and its implications for the ACP/EU Sugar Protocol, which is accepted as being of indefinite duration.
"The importance of the sugar industry was generally recognized, particularly to the economies of the CARICOM countries party to the Sugar Protocol - Barbados, Belize, Guyana, Jamaica, St. Kitts and Nevis and Trinidad and Tobago - in terms of foreign exchange and employment, especially for the rural population," the release stated.
This is especially important for Guyana, 80 percent of whose sugar is exported to the European Union. This single commodity contributes 20 percent of Guyana's total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and accounts for over 50 percent of the country's agricultural products.
Sugar is the country's single largest earner of foreign exchange. In 2001, sugar earned US$121 million, from the nation's estimated total merchandise exports of US$489 million. Of the US$121million earned by sugar, just under US$100 million came from export to the EU, largely due to the preferential price offered to ACP States.
The situation regarding rice, another important commodity for Guyana's economy, was also raised with the UK Prime Minister.
Prime Minister Blair promised that his Government would do its utmost to assist CARICOM in the REPA negotiations, but warned that the region would have to make hard choices and that the UK represented just one voice among many of the EU.