Jamaica benefits from multi-million dollar EU grant

Tuesday, July 05, 2011

KINGSTON, Jamaica (CMC) – The European Union is providing Euro 6.9 million (US$10.35 million) grant to Jamaica to help reform the island’s sugar industry.

The EU said that the funds are being provided under one of its three Sector Budget Support programmes to the island and had been approved under the EU's Accompanying Measures for former Sugar protocol countries (AMS).

The agreement was signed in St Kitts over the weekend between Prime Minister Bruce Golding and European Union Commissioner for Development Andris Piebalgs on the margins of the Caribbean Community (Caricom) summit that ended yesterday.

“The Budget Support to the Sugar Sector is aimed at assisting Jamaica's Country Strategy for the Sugar Industry by supporting the divestment and diversification of the cane industry, and cushioning the social impact on stakeholders during the sugar adaptation process,” said an EU statement.

It said that the overall objective of Jamaica's sugar strategy is for the long term sustainability of the industry through the introduction of private capital to address the technical inefficiencies and lack of financing and managerial capacity of the existing estates, as well as to diversify into other high value downstream products such as refined sugar, electricity production, ethanol and rum.

The EU said that grant to Jamaica was made possible after the government met a number of key criteria for the sector.

“These targets include the completion of the privatisation process; continuous funding of the cane expansion fund for small independent cane growers; roll-out of the grants scheme and retraining programme for displaced workers and a review of the regulatory and institutional framework”.

Since 2006 Jamaica has received Euro 58.2 million (US$84.6 million) billion under AMS.