ADVISORY CONSULTATION ON ACP SUGAR POLICY AND TRADE
13-14 September 1999 (M'babane, Swaziland)
INTRODUCTION
1. The FAO Advisory Consultation on ACP
Sugar Policy and Trade was held in Mbabane, Swaziland on 13-14
September 1999, and attended by 79 representatives from ACP governments,
signatories of the Sugar Protocol (SP) and the Special Preferential
Sugar Agreement (SPS), and from their sugar industries. A list
of participants has been appended. The countries represented
were Barbados, Belize, Côte d’Ivoire, Congo (Democratic Republic
of), Fiji, Guyana, Jamaica, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius,
Saint Kitts and Nevis, Swaziland, Tanzania, Trinidad and Tobago,
Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The FAO team of experts included
Messrs. Kaison Chang (Senior Commodity Specialist from the Commodities
and Trade Division of FAO), James Fry (LMC International), Kerry
Mulherin (independent consultant), Kaliopate Tavola (Deputy General
Manager of Fiji Sugar Marketing), and Michel Wohlgenant (Professor
of Economics from the University of North Carolina).
2. The objective of the Consultation was twofold:
- To provide a sound analytical base for complex sugar
policy and trade issues, identifying options which would assist in formulating strategies
aimed at maintaining and/or improving economic and social welfare gains of these
countries; and
- With respect to forthcoming international trade
negotiations, particularly the next round of World Trade Organization (WTO) multilateral
negotiations, to develop a coherent negotiating strategy, appropriate ideas to minimize
the adverse impact of trade liberalization on their countries and proposals to improve
efficiency and productivity of the sugar sectors.
OPENING REMARKS
3. The Consultation was opened by Mrs Victoria
Sekitoleko, the FAO Sub-Regional Representative for Southern and Eastern Africa, on behalf
of the Director-General of FAO, Mr Jacques Diouf. She considered it an honour that ACP
members had requested FAO to organize the Consultation. She stated that the main purpose
of the Consultation was to consider how possible forthcoming changes in the global trading
framework might affect the sugar sector and how ACP sugar exporting countries might best
deal with many consequential needs for adjustment.
4. The FAO Representative emphasized that the sugar
sector was crucial for the social and economic development of the ACP sugar producing
countries, which were with very few exceptions among the least-developed and net
food-importing group of countries. The sugar industries played a major role in their
economies, making a very significant contribution to the development of infrastructure in
rural areas, to education, employment, and health and other services, as well as in the
servicing of external debt. It was essential that current trading arrangements for ACP
countries were not adversely affected without satisfactory compensatory arrangements which
should include, inter alia, assistance towards improved competitiveness and where
appropriate, product diversification.
5. The FAO Representative reiterated that
FAO remained dedicated to supporting a fair and equitable trading
system contributing to the improvement of employment opportunities
and to increasing incomes of the rural poor. The Plan of Action
of the World Food Summit committed FAO and other organizations
to continue to assist developing countries on trade issues and
in particular to help them prepare for future multilateral trade
negotiations so that they might participate as well informed and
equal partners in the negotiation process. One initiative had
been the establishment of an Umbrella
Programme for Training on Uruguay Round (UR) and Future Multilateral
Negotiations on Agriculture. She invited the ACP countries
to take advantage of this initiative.
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