GENEVA (Reuters) – An end is in sight to the world’s longest-running trade dispute, involving bananas, and a deal could be in place by the end of the year, senior European and Latin American trade negotiators said yesterday.
Settling the banana dispute would be a fillip for the World Trade Organisation, whose long-running Doha round to free up global commerce, like other trade negotiations, has at times been held hostage by the decades-old row.
“We are not yet there, but I perceive a willingness on all sides to come to an agreement,” Costa Rica’s WTO ambassador, Ronald Saborio Soto, who coordinates Latin American countries at the WTO in negotiations on tropical products, told Reuters
Cesar Montano Huerta, the top diplomat at the WTO mission of Ecuador, the world’s biggest banana exporter, said officials were negotiating intensively and even hoped to clinch a deal in the next couple of weeks.
“We feel the elements are now there, we feel we could close this quite quickly,” said David O’Sullivan, director-general for trade in the European commission, told Reuters.
None were willing to comment on details of the emerging deal, but the outlines are clear, according to officials.
The deal — which could be reached before the WTO’s ministerial conference starting Nov. 30 — would see the European Union cutting tariffs on bananas for suppliers in Latin America and elsewhere.
In return the Latin Americans would drop outstanding challenges to the EU at the WTO, and Brussels would provide compensation to African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries — mainly former British, French and Portuguese colonies — who would lose their preferential access to the European market. The detailed terms are likely to resemble an agreement almost reached in July last year on the fringes of a meeting of trade ministers seeking a breakthrough on the Doha talks.