The 51st meeting of the Council for Trade and Economic Development (COTED) revealed that Caricom is unable to meet its own demand for sugar by almost 50 percent.
At the closing ceremony of the COTED ministers meeting held on Friday in Suriname, Desiree Field-Ridley, Caricom’s Trade and Economic Integration Officer in Charge said that sugar was still a “work in progress.”
The vast shortfall in sugar is a significant change for the region which in its heyday saw large surpluses. Sugar production has since been terminated on several islands and large-scale producers such as Guyana have encountered major production shortfalls.
Field-Ridley said that following the COTED meeting on Tuesday the region had to look for other uses for sugarcane past the production of sugar. “In terms of recognizing quota arrangements etcetera that is a very difficult situation ….we definitely have to look for other uses of sugarcane”, Field-Ridley stated.
She said that while the region recognizes the importance of finding a means of dealing with low sugar production regionally and the pending end to European Sugar Quotas in 2017 no deadline has been set to secure technical staff for finding alternative solutions.
According to the report, Caricom’s demand for sugar is over 950,000 tonnes, but the region can only now produce roughly 500,000 tonnes.
During the press briefing closing the ministerial meeting, it was the media who brought up the issue of sugar as the topic was absent from the recap of the COTED meeting delivered by the Chairman and Jamaica’s Minister of Agriculture, Derrick Kellier.
Speaking to members of the Guyanese media after the press briefing Kellier stated that “Privatization is the way to go if you want to move it quickly because the capital is necessary.”
He stated that “You can always plant sugar cane but if you don’t have all the inputs…you won’t get the results. You still get seven tons to the acre when you should be getting 50.”
Kellier said very plainly that “You have to modernize…you get modernization because state apparatus does not have the kind of funds to modernize the agriculture sector, you have to get private investments.”
According to the COTED report, one issue arising from the fifth meeting of Caricom Sugar Stakeholders, held in Jamaica in May and chaired by Guyana’s Agriculture Minister Dr Leslie Ramsammy, was that the Caricom Common External Tariff (CET) could not provide sufficient protection.
The report stated that the CET is currently 40 percent but may still be an insufficient incentive for sugar refinery development. It continued that the CET was not being adhered to in relation to the definitions of raw and refined sugar. The community currently does not apply the CET to refined sugar but this is not being enforced.
Following the end of the COTED meeting, it was decided that a one-year study is needed to collect data with respect to non-tariff measures. Guyana is to be one of the six countries to be studied. Jamaica, St Vincent and the Grenadines and Trinidad and Tobago will also be studied and this will commence next month.
In relation to the EU market, the report states that advocacy intervention by Ambassadors in Brussels would be ongoing to the EU Council and Parliament calling on them for the extension of the EU-funded Accompanying Measures Support Pro-gramme.
Guyana has received over $31.1 billion from the EU under the Guyana Annual Action Programme on Accompanying Mea-sures for Sugar Protocol Countries. More troubling was the revelation in the COTED report that Guyana only received 70 percent of funds earmarked from the accompanying measures. Last year Am-bassador Robert Kopecky noted that land conversion was key for Guyana to receive the full amount of $3 billion.
Regionally, the cost of sugar production is on the rise while yields are under target. On the question of the end of the EU sugar quota, Jamaica’s Agri-culture Ministry Permanent Secretary Donovan Stanford told Stabroek News that the region was “prepared in the sense that, one, we still have viable domestic markets we consume about 60,000 tonnes of raw sugar which is good enough market, two, at least 12 of our factories are going into things like co-generations”.
He said that privatization in Jamaica has been a success with an annual sugar production increase since privatization of 20 percent. He noted that last year sugar production was 128,000 tonnes while this year it is already at 154,000. Stanford told Stabroek News that Jamaica currently produced sugar at approximately US$0.20 compared to Guyana’s US$0.35 per pound.
During the closing remarks at the COTED meeting, the unsuccessful efforts of the Technical Management Advisory Committee were pronounced upon. The community decided that the reduction of barriers to trade would be done through the implementation of four thematic groups with individual organizations tasked to assist. The four groups were business development, a climate change group, agriculture and food safety systems and a research and human development group.
The Caribbean Develop-ment Bank is to provide guidance. The Special Meeting of COTED on Agriculture was held at the Caribbean Week of Agriculture facilitated by The Caribbean Agriculture Research and Development Institute (CARDI) and the Technical Centre for Agriculture and Rural Co-operation (CTA).
