Bananas being prepared for packaging to be exported on the Plunkett Farm, Albion Mountain, St. Mary, recently. - file photo

John Myers Jr., Farmers Weekly Coordinator

Banana is among the list of goods and services entering the European Union (EU) from African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries, including Jamaica that all existing tariffs and quota limitations will be removed.

Since the announcement of a proposal in April by the EU to grant easier preferential access to goods and services from the group of developing countries as part of a new Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), there has been some uncertainty in CARIFORUM as to whether bananas were included among the list of goods and services.

In fact, head of the Regional Negotiating Machinery (RNM), Dr. Richard Bernal, in a recent interview had indicated that because there was no clear indication whether banana, which is a sensitive trade commodity, was included - the proposal was being carefully assessed by Trade Ministers of CARIFORUM.

But the first secretary and head of trade, economics, politics and information at the European Commission (EC) delegation to Jamaica, Carlo Pettinato, confirmed that banana was among the list of goods and services from which all existing quota limitations and tariffs would be removed under the new proposal.

The proposal

"The EU offer includes every single product - agricultural and non-agricultural ... so the idea is to include every single product, including bananas, for our preferential partners," Mr. Pettinato told Farmers Weekly on Tuesday. "Yes, it (the proposal) is aimed at including also products like bananas," he added.

The new EPA under negotiation is to replace the existing Cotonou Agreement the EU has with the ACP group. The outgoing agreement will end in December and the new treaty scheduled to come into effect in January 2008.

But the new offer to grant even further preferential access to commodities such as banana, for example, comes in the face of stiff opposition from low-cost banana producers in Latin America. The Latin Americans have been challenging the preferential arrangement by lobbying the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to force the EU to end it.

So far they have been successful in having the tariff imposed on non-preferential banana producers, such as themselves, reduced to?176. This is currently being challenged on the basis that it was still promoting unfair trade. However, the WTO is still considering the fresh arguments.