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WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION RULING FAVORS REGION'S BANANAS, PORTENDS DISASTER IN THE CARIBBEAN.

Article Excerpt
Bolstered by favorable rulings from the World Trade Organization (WTO), the region's banana producers met in Panama Nov. 15 to press the European Union (EU) to reduce tariffs designed to favor African, Caribbean, and Pacific producers in the European market. Ministers from Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua came together with the aim of gaining "total access" to the market. Panamanian Trade Minister Alejandro Ferrer said, "We are going to analyze scenarios and come up with a common position to meet a new offer the European Union should make."

The first of the two WTO rulings struck down a European proposal to impose a tariff of 230 euros (1 euro = US$.86) per ton of Latin American bananas (see NotiCen, 2005-08-11). The EU came back on Sept. 26 with a new proposal of 187 euros, to begin Jan. 1, 2006, and the WTO spurned that one too.

Led by Ecuador, Latin America's leading banana exporter, the countries have settled on an acceptable tariff. "We have clearly said that we want the lowest possible tariff, which should not be more than 75 euros. That position has not changed," said Costa Rican Foreign Trade Minister Manuel Gonzalez Saenz. Costa Rica is the second-largest banana exporter.

The problem for the Latin Americans is not just the amount of the tariff. The European offer also included a duty-free quota for bananas from the Africa-Caribbean-Pacific (ACP) countries that would have allowed those countries free access to the market for 775,000 metric tons of bananas. Under the previous regime, which the EU is attempting to replace with a single tariff, the Latin Americans paid US$91.50 a...

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