President Bharrat Jagdeo urged delegates at the 11th Special ACP Ministerial Conference on Sugar to present a united front in international negotiations as it is vital that sugar remains a part of the future of ACP countries.
“The solidarity that we’ve had for such a long time has stood up well in international relations because in this solidarity, we had strength. When the Caribbean can get together with Africa and the Pacific and we can speak with a single voice on an issue then we pack a bigger punch that the individual size of each of these countries had we spoken by ourselves,” Jagdeo said.
According to a Government Information Agency (GINA) Jagdeo said too while the countries may disagree they must be decisive about what they want from international negotiations. “We also need to be clear about what we want and what we are going to demand of the international community because many times, among ourselves, we have, and understandably so, different positions but we allow the different positions to create a situation where we can be divided because of these different positions,” he said. He advised the officials that at the end of the conference a single position should be agreed on to submit to international forums. The president said too it is necessary to start “fashioning the framework that we want in international economic and trade relations.”
According to GINA the 11th special conference is the final one before the end of the Sugar Protocol on September 30.
Jagdeo reminded the delegates that because of the difficult world economic environment, many of the ACP states will find it challenging to withstand the upcoming cuts and still remain prosperous. “Whatever plans you have within your own country – increased productivity and to expand sugar production or do it better, to diversify away from sugar, it will require some money and most of the countries that we come from don’t have much money,” he said. The president said too many of the countries face many financial demands and have very limited resources to meet them and those situations have now been exacerbated by the global financial crisis.
With a reduction in revenues and more unemployment, policymakers often shift from long-term action into many short-term measures to alleviate the immediate sufferings of people because that’s more politically feasible, the president said. Despite these difficulties, however, he was adamant that the sugar industry remain a vital part of the future of the ACP countries and urged delegates to develop a strong case to ensure this. “We have to make sure that our case is strong so that even within our countries, we can demonstrate, with our arguments, that policymakers must continue to invest in this vital industry for many of our economies,” Jagdeo said.
