The Dominican Agro-business Board (JAD) yesterday made official what it has been saying informally for weeks to the Fern?ndez Government: do not re-negotiate the agricultural portions of the free trade agreement with Central American nations. In a letter to Foreign Minister Eduardo Latorre, JAD President Fernando Cabrera called for the Government to resist pressures from Honduras and Nicaragua to re-negotiate the Treaty’s Miami Protocol. Cabrera’s letter says that JAD supports the agreement and its Protocol "as written" and JAD will tell that to Congress – hinting that the Fern?ndez Administration that it would lose JAD support for the agreement should its agriculture passages be amended in any way. The Miami Protocol features restrictions on market access for a number of agricultural and fishery goods, including a "negative list" of products excluded from the trade liberalization measures of the Treaty, such as beef, beer, chicken, cigarettes, milk and shrimp. Honduras and Nicaragua have yet to sign the Miami Protocol, at first blaming the delay on damage to their economies by Hurricane Mitch and later saying that they wanted better market access terms from the Dominican Republic for their products.
