Sugar producers in developing world seek more EU aid
(GEORGETOWN) - Sugar-producing countries from Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (ACP) appealed Monday to the European Union for more funds to help bolster their sugar cane production, which has been hard hit by the global financial crisis.
"We plead with the EU and the European parliament to provide additional resources beyond the current financial framework because the impact of the crisis was not factored into the calculation of the cost", said the ACP's ministerial spokesman on sugar, Mauritius' Minister of Agro-Industry and Food Production, Satya Veyash Faugoo.
The ACP states -- 48 African, 16 Caribbean and 15 Pacific former European colonies -- are signatories of the Lome Convention with the European Commission on tariff preferences.
Europe's former colonies need more funds to adapt to a 36 percent drop in the price of cane sugar since September, a reduction that would result in a annual loss of 200 million euros for ACP countries, Satya Veyash Faugoo said at the opening of the 11th special ACP ministerial conference in Guyana.
ACP countries want the EU to speed up the disbursement of more than 1.2 billion euros to the 13 sugar producing nations between 2007 to 2013.
Guyana's Prime Minister, Samuel Hinds, called on the EU to ensure the speedier disbursement of funds so that cane sugar industries become more productive and internationally competitive.
"The slow pace of delivery of accompanying measures with strict conditionalities restricts the disbursement of timely support to countries whose economies are facing severe consequences" said Hinds.
Faced with administrative limitations, Hinds said the ACP would continue to press the EU to "simplify its approaches" and so improve record of disbursements to ACP countries affected by Europe's reform of its sugar regime.
The 1974 Sugar Protocol, which guaranteed much higher than world market prices, is due to end in September, after the World Trade Organization (WTO) ruled it to be contrary to global free trade rules.
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