30 September 2007 - raidiojamaica.com 
 
Reports are now surfacing that the European Union (EU) Saturday decided to scrap the 32-year-old Sugar Protocol which has been the fulcrum of trade ties with sugar-producing countries.

Chairman of the All Island Jamaica Cane Farmers Association, Allan Rickards, says the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) sugar-producing countries have until 2009 to get prepared for the renunciation.

Mr. Rickards says currently the EU and the ACP are in negotiations to replace the old protocol with new Economic Partnership Agreements, EPA's for each country.

"That protocol was signed off on by all ACP countries what is going to replace it is six different EPAs as the ACP countries are now divided into six different regions," said Mr. Rickards.

"Our region is called Cariforum which is Caricom including the Dominican Republic and Haiti and we together will negotiate an EPA for our region which will form our platform for negotiations including all the benefits of the protocol that is being renounced and the features of which will include access to our sugar and some kind of pricing mechanism," he continued.

Meanwhile, Director General of the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery, Ambassador Richard Bernal says negotiations involving the European Union and African, Caribbean and Pacific states will continue.    

Ambassador Richard Bernal says the EU and CARIFORUM countries conducted a series of talks last week which was the penultimate round of negotiations. 

He says another round is schedule for mid October which should see the completion of negotiations.

According to Ambassador Bernal these negotiations will end with a final decision on several issues including sugar.

"In the case of sugar the European Union made an offer to ACP coutries on how sugar will be treated and the ACP countries which include the CARIFORUM countries have made a counter proposal. The negotiations on this issue are still going on," said Ambassador Bernal. 

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