Lomé, Togo – Fiji’s Head of Mission to the European Union, Ambassador Deo Saran, addressed the ACP Ministerial Consultations on Commodities held during ACP Council of Ministers Meeting in Lomé, Togo, highlighting the importance of sugar industry to vulnerable and Small Island Developing States, like Fiji. In this context, he submitted that it was vital for these suppliers to obtain a stable and commercially remunerative price with a sufficiently long-term perspective, necessary for continued investment in improving productivity and efficiencies.
Ambassador Saran noted with concern the recent sharp decline in EU sugar prices. This, he noted, was a deeply worrying development for Fiji and many other ACP sugar suppliers which may result in many of the suppliers, including Fiji, being displaced from their traditional market in the EU and forced to find new and less remunerative markets.
Ambassador Saran said that the current EU market situation can be attributed to the abolition of the EU sugar production quotas on 30th September 2017. This is aggravated by the Voluntary Coupled Support subsidy program provided by the EU to the sugar sector in some of its Member States which in our view undermines the market orientated sugar regime reform.
“Fiji, therefore, fully support the call by the ACP for the EU to abolish Voluntary Coupled Support subsidy program in the sugar sector and refrain from instituting other trade-distorting measures, and to engage with the ACP to look into ways of addressing the current situation which has led to many of the ACP suppliers under the EPA and EBA initiative to cease exports of sugar to the EU market so soon after the abolition of the EU sugar production quotas” Ambassador Saran said.
Speaking on Brexit, Ambassador Saran, noted that as United Kingdom was the largest market for the ACP and LDC sugar, Brexit offered a real opportunity to negotiate a meaningful preferential market for sugar which would be of lasting value and which would not only allow the U.K.'s beet growers and the UK refining sector to prosper but also provide a platform for development in ACP sugar industries.
At the same time, the ACP will need to ensure that the ACP sugar suppliers are not worse off in their trading relationship with the EU 27 post-Brexit.