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REGION DISHEARTENED OVER AGRICULTURE IN C.A.F.T.A. ROUND.

Article Excerpt
The eighth and penultimate planned round of the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) opened in Houston Oct. 20. It is at once the official opening of the latest installment in the marathon talks and the continuation of feverish negotiations held in a miniround in Washington last week (see NotiCen, 2003-09-18) regarding issues related to protection of Central American agriculture.

Central Americans worked to stuff the region's agricultural commodities into the canastas appropriate to their sensitivity. Canasta is a category defined by the number of years of tariff protection the items within it will receive under the treaty. More importantly, they tried to get the US to extend the region's privileges under the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI) and the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) to CAFTA (see NotiCen, 2000-10-12). They failed in that.

Roberto Monge, private-sector negotiator from El Salvador, said that less than 3% of more than 1,200 items remain outside the free-trade agreement at this point. He said that these include dairy products, aviculture products, sausage, and pork products, about 20 or 30 items in all.

Central American negotiators, who asked that their names not be used, told the Spanish news agency EFE that there had been no progress at the miniround, and that the process had...

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