AGRICULTURE minister Roger Clarke, has described as “devastating” the latest ruling against the proposed European Union (EU) banana tariffs, saying the move will only serve to deepen the worries of the local agriculture sector.

According to Clarke, a possible ending of preferential treatment for the island’s bananas would further plunge the sector into uncertainty – with the sector having to already cope with a massive sugar crisis.

“It is not good news for us as far as our banana export industry is concerned,” Clarke told the Sunday Observer Friday night.

“We were pinning our hopes on a tariff regime,” he said, that would ensure survival, “but now this is the predicament we are in – and look what is happening to sugar,” he added.

On Thursday, a World Trade Organisation (WTO) arbitration body ruled that the EU’s planned overhaul of its import rules would not maintain market access for Latin American (Latam) producers, Brazil, Costa Rica, Columbia and Venezuela, under the most favoured nation (MFN) designation.

The MFN principle holds that a trade deal offered by one WTO member to another, must be extended to all WTO signatories.

The ruling was the second in three months by the WTO. In early August, an arbitration body rejected the EU’s initial proposal that would have installed a euro230 tariff on bananas imported from Latam countries. The proposal, the WTO said then, was “illegal”.

In its latest attempt, the EU had pushed for a new tariff rate of euro187 per metric tonne of bananas imported from the Latam countries and a duty-free quota of 775,000 metric tonnes of bananas from Jamaica and other banana-producing nations in the Asia, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) regions.

The ACP had originally proposed a tariff of euro275 that it said would have offered the regions enough protection necessary for their survival.

On Thursday, the WTO sided with the Latam countries saying that the reduced tariffs would restrict their abilities to sell the fruit on the European market. The 25-nation EU is the largest market for bananas.

“We were hoping that if we at least got the euro187 tariff, we would struggle along with that,” Clarke told the Sunday Observer.

The ruling was met with deep shock throughout the region which has called on the EU to find a solution “as a matter of urgency”.

Immediately following Thursday’s ruling, the EU announced that it would closely examine the ruling to determine the next steps.

“The region calls on the EU to negotiate with MFN and ACP suppliers to arrive at a mutually satisfactory solution that ultimately is fair to both,” a release from the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery (CRNM) said on Friday.

According to the CRNM, swift action has been taken by the region to bring together the various stakeholders, to “discuss the options on the way forward.”

In the meanwhile, several persons have criticised the latest WTO ruling, among them Jamaica’s Dr Marshall Hall who chairs the Caribbean Banana Exporters Association.

The decision, Dr Hall said, is a “monumental disaster for the African, Caribbean and Pacific banana-supplying countries.”

Dominica’s foreign affairs minister Charles Savarin said the decision raises concerns as “to whether small countries can continue to compete and trade under the WTIO system.”

“It seems we have no place in the multilateral trading system, which is confining and consigning small, vulnerable developing countries to the dustbin, forcing them to be dependent on alms and handouts, rather than embracing them and enabling them t forge their own path to development,” he added.

martina@jamaicaobserver.com