CARIFORUM is working towards meeting the December 31, 2007 deadline for a new trade deal with Europe but there are still many obstacles to be ironed out at a meeting concluding in Jamaica today and sugar and rice will be key topics.
In a telephone interview, Minister of Foreign Trade and International Cooperation Dr Henry Jeffrey told Stabroek News from Montego Bay, Jamaica last evening that Barbados Prime Minister Owen Arthur, CARICOM’s and CARIFORUM’s lead Prime Minister with responsibility for foreign trade matters made the announcement of CARIFORUM’s efforts at arriving at mutually agreed provisions which would also clear the issues of market access and gain a clearer notion of what would be on the ground to assist ACP countries during the transition period for phased-in market access.
It was not certain, however, whether the timeline would be reached for initialling the EPA with the EU by month-end as initially agreed.
Arthur made the announcement at a meeting that included President Bharrat Jagdeo; host Prime Minister of Jamaica Bruce Golding; Prime Minister of Belize Said Musa; Prime Minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines Dr Ralph Gonsalves and Prime Minister of Haiti Jacques-Edouard Alexis.
The meeting also included EU Development and Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Louis Michel and Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson who reiterated that a new trading arrangement that was compatible with the World Trade Organisation rules and with development at the core was good for the Caribbean.
He said that reciprocity was not an issue since there would be phased in development for 15 per cent of the region’s products (sensitive products) over a 25-year period, meaning they would not be liberalised immediately. The group that would be liberalized immediately would be in a group that was already zero-rated.
Bone of contention
However, Jeffrey said that sugar and rice, which would be treated differently based on the EU market access offer made in April this year, were still bones of contention.
The protection that sugar had under the EU Sugar Protocol (SP) and which was scrapped unilaterally by the EU last Friday, would be on the agenda for discussion today. Arrangements for sugar are to be phased in until 2015 and the ACP sugar producing countries which had signed onto the SP would still like its benefits to go beyond 2015.
Earlier in the day, while opening the two-day meeting, Jamaica’s Prime Minister Golding said that Caribbean realities demand that flexibilities are built into the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between CARIFORUM and the European Union to take account of the region’s levels of development.
In addition, he said, at the opening of the CARIFORUM-EU Meeting yesterday that “the provisions of Article XXIV of the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) should be interpreted in such a manner as to ensure that the greatest level of flexibility is provided while still maintaining WTO (World Trade Organisation) compatibility.
The provisions of the Agreement have provided for the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) states and EU to cooperate in the WTO to achieve greater flexibility in the application of WTO rules in regional trade agreements involving countries at different levels of development.
He said, “We must also remain aware that the EPA should not make ACP and thus CARIFORUM countries worse off than they were under the Lome/Cotonou Arrangements.”
Expressing awareness of the deadlines which have to be met in these negotiations and the limited time remaining, he said that, “As a newcomer to the process, I am concerned about the frenetic pace of the negotiations and our ability to meet the deadlines and whether we are compromising our regional and national interest in the haste to conclude these negotiations.”
He noted that CARICOM Heads of Government at their meeting in July this year called for the convening of a meeting of the CARICOM Council for Trade and Economic Development (COTED) to review the EPA in an effort to ensure that the agreement was one which can be sold to our people and that the ACP would be convening a similar meeting in Benin later this month. “These two meetings should allow us the opportunity to do some further stocktaking,” he said.
Meanwhile it should be noted that the Pacific and the EU agreed in Brussels, Belgium on Tuesday after a ministerial meeting to seek an interim trade deal to meet an end-of-year deadline to bring their commercial ties into line with WTO rules.
A joint declaration from the two said, “in view of the short time available until the deadline of December 31, 2007, it was necessary to conclude a WTO-compatible interim agreement as a stepping stone to a comprehensive EPA.”
Yesterday in Montego Bay, Golding said that the ACP regions were faced with many difficult decisions as the relationship with the EU transitions from one based on non-reciprocal preferential arrangements under the Lome Convention and Cotonou Agreements, to a reciprocal trading relationship which must be WTO compatible.
“As we negotiate a new arrangement, we have to address real problems which will directly impact the lives of every man, woman and child. These include whether or not to continue raising revenue from import duties and other border taxes. Such revenue continues to contribute to the economies of countries in this grouping, including Jamaica,” he said.
He added that ACP countries would have to consider how this void in national budgets would be filled, if they were to move away from this source of funding. “In these negotiations, we are also called upon to consider whether our farmers and manufacturers can compete with imports from Europe, which on the agricultural side, remain heavily subsidized,” he said.
Noting that sugar and bananas were increasingly coming under pressure and losing their preferential access in the EU market, he said that, “Quota-free or duty free within the EPA, there is the question of whether our sugar and bananas will remain viable or whether those of us who are smaller producers must become the causalities of trade liberalisation and a free market which favours the larger and more competitive producers over the smaller ones.”
Stating that the partnership with the EU has been invaluable, he said that as the deadlines draw near and the negotiations intensify, any agreement arrived at places development at its core and takes account of the interest of the countries and peoples of the region.
