Sugar industry battles to survive
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Trump admin halts
cruises to Cuba
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In an unusually
detailed statement, the
sugar cartel contended
that governments must
act quickly as pressure
to sustain daily production
is mounting and that
“extra regional duty free
imports are being dumped
into the CARICOM market
at less than half the
value they achieve in their
home markets.” The body
wants import tax protection
for an indigenously
produced product from
governments and plans
to continue its protracted
lobby to persuade governments
to slap tariffs on
imported sugar.
The SAC did not identify
countries which are
dumping cheaper sugar
into the bloc but has in
the past complained about
imports from Colombia
and Guatemala among
others. It said the situation
has been worsened
by the fact that the European
Union has disbanded
a preferential scheme for
sugar dating back to the
European colonial era.
That regime had
allowed for fixed quotas
and prices and exports
for an unlimited duration.
The new system,
put in place more than
18 months ago, has
dealt a major blow to
regional exports as bigger
players like Australia
and Brazil can now sell
large amounts to the
EU, beating out regional
exports.
Asked for an update,
CARICOM Trade Chief,
Joseph Cox said officials
dispute the 70 percent
figure that the SAC has
proferred and suggested
that nothing will be done
until an accurate picture
is garnered about exactly
what is happening in the
sector. “We can’t verify
that figure. We don’t yet
know it to be so,” Cox
told this publication but
stopped short on suggesting
what might be
the solutions at least in
the short term.
The body urged governments
to act quickly
on policy changes to protect
the sector as “a failure
to achieve this threatens a
major agricultural sector
of the region’s economy,
hundreds of thousands of
Caribbean jobs and questions
the effectiveness of
the single market (trading
system). The four are
set to produce a total of
300,000 metric tonnes
of sugar in the next 18
months.
Of the four still in
the business, Guyana,
Jamaica and Barbados
are struggling to remain
afloat as production costs
are sometimes up to three
times higher than world
prices per pound of sugar.
Belize is doing better but,
like the others, has to
contend with local world
market prices and competition
from beet sugar
of Europe.
Regional sugar has
taken several major blows
in the past 15 years. Back
in 2005 for example, the
European Union which
had absorbed the largest
amount of exports from
the region slashed production
prices by 36 percent,
as part of a process
to undermine the special
sugar protocol that had
been in place for former
colonies in Africa, the
Caribbean and the Pacific,
the so-called ACP group
of countries.
St. Kitts and Trinidad
immediately packed up
and started to dismantle
their factories while the
four remained and negotiated
hundreds of millions
of dollars in grant aid support
from the EU to make
up for job losses and general
displacement.
A year and a half ago,
the EU dismantled the
special protocol altogether,
opening its once protected
doors to any sugarproducing
country such
as Brazil and Australia,
which produce by the
millions of metric tonnes
annually. This meant that
decades of guaranteed
prices, fixed quotas and
exports for an unlimited
duration all went down
the drain.
Now the SAC is turning
its attention to governments,
asking them
to tax imported sugar so
they could survive what
executives say is the last
battle on the way to the
production cemetery.
Continued from Page 1
By Matthew Lee And
Michael Weissenstein
WASHINGTON (AP)
— The Trump administration
on Tuesday
ended the most popular
forms of U.S. travel
to Cuba, banning cruise
ships and a heavily used
category of educational
travel in an attempt
to cut off cash to the
island’s communist government.
Cruise travel from the
U.S. to Cuba began in
May 2016 during President
Barack Obama’s
opening with the island.
It has become the most
popular form of U.S. leisure
travel to the island,
bringing 142,721 people
in the first four months
of the year, a more than
300% increase over the
same period last year.
For travelers confused
about the thicket of
federal regulations governing
travel to Cuba,
cruises offered a simple,
one-stop, guaranteedlegal
way to travel.
That now appears to
be over.
“Cruise ships as well
as recreational and
pleasure vessels are prohibited
from departing
the U.S. on temporary
sojourn to Cuba effective
tomorrow,” the
Commerce Department
said in a statement to
The Associated Press.
The new restrictions
are part of a broader
effort by the administration
of President
Donald Trump to roll
back the Obama-era
efforts to restore normal
relations between
the United States and
Cuba, which drew sharp
criticism from the more
hardline elements of the
Cuban-American community
and their allies
in Congress.
Treasury said the
sanctions would take
effect on Wednesday
after they are published
Continued on Page 26
/
/