Ross Sheil, Staff Reporter
CLARKE
LOBBYING COULD reduce the severity of the European Union's (EU) price cut in African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) produced sugar says Agriculture Minister Roger Clarke. The cuts are expected to reduce Jamaica's sugar revenue by US$28 million per year.
Mr. Clarke was speaking from Brussels yesterday, where along with other ACP ministers he has been engaged in two days of meetings with their contemporaries from EU countries on the sugar issue. Tonight (Tuesday) he will fly to Kenya for a week-long meeting of ACP sugar ministers.
"We have been lobbying hard and Finland, Poland and Austria have been especially sympathetic. Austria has suggested to us that the price cuts will be less than the proposed amount," he told The Gleaner. He is due to meet with the Spanish minister today.
EU farm ministers are expected to finalise their sugar reforms in November, by which time they will reduce the price paid for ACP sugar by 39 per cent over a three-year period beginning next July.
SOCIAL IMPACT OF CUT
Mr. Clarke addressed ministers of the 25 EU countries on the social impact of the cuts on Monday. "I told them about the unemployment and the devastation it would cause our rural communities," he reported. "They conceded that this meeting has been very informative. They have been able to hear in a more concrete way the kind of problems it (the cuts) will cause."
A fund of 40 million Euros is to be made available to ACP countries in 2006 when the cuts begin to take affect. Further funding will be allocated to individual countries based on their proposals, submitted to the EU, outlining how they will adapt to the cuts.
"I am confident that a reasonable level of assistance will come to tide us over ... I explained that if we could sustain a 40 per cent cut it would have meant we were making humongous profits in the past and that is not the reality," said Mr. Clarke.
Arvin Boolell, agriculture minister from Mauritius and head of the 76-nation ACP group, said the EU reforms, "will sound the death of the sugar cane industry in the ACP countries."
"We have said that we are not insensitive or impervious to change, but we cannot have a reform that is too deep, too swift, too abrupt and too violent, because the knock-on effect will spell disaster and impending doom," for poor countries, Boolell said after the talks.
- Additional reporting by the Associated Press
