The Secretariat of the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States

Port Moresby, 29 May 2006

The Ministerial Follow-up Committee on Cotton held its 5th meeting in the margins of the 83rd session of the ACP Council of Ministers, under the chairmanship of Hon. Kwadowo Affram Asiedu, Deputy Minister of Trade and Commerce of Ghana, on Sunday 28 May 2006 in Port Moresby (Papua New Guinea), to take stock of the situation in the ACP cotton sector.

The Ministerial Committee conducted deliberations on the three areas of action which have occupied the Group’s attention since the 82nd session of the Council of Ministers, namely the implementation of recommendations from the 2nd meeting of ACP Stakeholders in the Cotton sector, finalisation of the preparatory phase of the Support Programme for the EU-Africa Cotton Partnership, and finally, developments in the cotton dossier at the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

During the meeting, the Ministerial Committee expressed consternation at the increasing and persistent delay in releasing the financial resources promised under the European Development Fund (EDF) to support the implementation of the EU-Africa Cotton Partnership, especially since the completion of a substantial part of the actions recommended by the cotton sector stakeholders in November 2005 depend on the actual launch of the support programme.

The Ministerial Committee called for vigilance so as to ensure that the expected resources are channelled into financing the actions awaited by the stakeholders in the sector, and not into the constant organisation of seminars and studies that are intended to provide a better understanding of the situation in the sector.
Regarding the implementation of the support programme for the EU-Africa Cotton Partnership, the Committee called on the Working Group on Cotton, and the ACP Secretariat to bring pressure to bear on the European Union so that the resources to be allocated to the programme would be directly attributed to identifiable actions that would benefit stakeholders at the local level.

Finally, regarding the WTO’s treatment of the Cotton dossier, the Ministerial Committee noted, with regret, that since the announcements made in Hong Kong on export subsidies and market access, there had been no further developments in the negotiations of the WTO Cotton Subcommittee, other than the proposals regarding modalities that were made by the proponent countries (Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali and Chad) of the cotton initiative.

The Ministerial Committee called on the ACP Group to utilise its negotiating capacities within the WTO, in Geneva, to bring pressure to bear on the European Union to ensure that it would resolutely support the ACP countries in their request for the elimination of the internal support that some rich countries grant to their producers. The Committee encouraged the Brussels- and Geneva-based diplomatic representatives from the ACP countries of the Working Group on Cotton to organise consultations with a view to fully utilising all possible means of strengthening the cotton sector in ACP countries.

List of ACP cotton-producing and exporting countries
Angola, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, (DR) Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe