ACP SECRETARIAT

PRESS RELEASE
2 April 2004

DECLARATION OF ACP SUGAR PRODUCERS AFTER THE FIRST MEETING OF THE WTO PANEL ON THE CLAIMS BY : BRAZIL / THAILAND / AUSTRALIA

Fourteen ACP countries signatory to the Sugar Protocol (Barbados, Belize, Fiji, Guyana, Côte D’Ivoire, Jamaica, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, St. Kitts & Nevis, Swaziland, Tanzania and Trinidad and Tobago) , third parties to the Sugar dispute, expressed their views with one voice through their Spokesman, Hon. P.K. Jugnauth, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance of Mauritius, at the Panel’s first working session this week in Geneva. Considering the stakes for their small and vulnerable economies, five ACP Ministers were present to mark the importance they attach to the Sugar dossier.

The ACP countries recalled that their participation was motivated by their commercial as well as systemic interests. They also stressed that their vital interests or, even in certain cases, the survival of their economies and societies, would be threatened if the Panel concluded in favour of the plaintiffs.

The Sugar Protocol forms an integral part of the EC Sugar Regime and attacking any one of the components of the Regime could destabilise the entire system with disastrous consequences for the ACP beneficiary countries. In Guyana, for example, 150,000 of the total population of 750,000 depend on the sugar industry. For Swaziland, sugar production accounts for 60% of agricultural production and 11% of that country’s GDP. Ninety-three (93%) of St. Kitts’ agricultural exports derive from the sugar industry.

Total exports from ACP countries to the EC market (1.6M tonnes) represent only 3.6% of the global trade in sugar, i.e. 0.18% of total global agriculture. Brazil produces close to 23M tonnes of sugar and exports 14M tonnes.

ACP countries have formulated legal arguments which they are convinced will undermine the complaint lodged by Australia, Brazil and Thailand. They strongly defended the EC’s position in this matter.

The objectives of the Marrakech Agreement aim “to raise the standard of living, provide full employment, and a high and ever-increasing level of real income…

It is in good faith, and with the conviction that their preferential trade agreements would be implemented in a stable and predictable manner that the ACP countries joined the WTO in 1995.

However, in the wake of the “Banana Dispute” which devastated the economies of some Caribbean islands such as Dominica, it is now the turn of the “Sugar Industry” which is threatened by major agriculture producers whose level of efficiency and competitiveness could never be attained by the small, vulnerable ACP countries.

The countries which lodged the complaint have admitted that their claim was effectively aimed at the entire European Sugar Regime. This cynical admission confirms the fears expressed by the ACP States from the outset, namely, that the said claim would compromise all the benefits they currently derive from their sugar exports to the European Community market. Consequently, the ACP countries were absolutely right in not attributing any credit to the pseudo assurances given by the complainants that their action was not targeting the acquis of the ACP States.

It is clear that the countries that made the complaint want to call into question, to their advantage, the balance of the agreements concluded at the end of the Uruguay Round of Talks. This attitude cannot sustain the confidence of the small vulnerable states in the multilateral trading system.

The ACP states feel that Thailand, which is operating a sugar regime similar to that of the EC, has no moral right to challenge the regime in question.

To safeguard their interests, the ACP states once again submitted a request based on supplementary arguments to obtain extended third party rights. This request would enable them to continue participating actively in all the later stages of the process and bears, among other things, on their participation in the Panel’s second hearing scheduled for May, as well as the right to inspect the second submission by the parties and the drafting of the final report.