Region’s producers complain about increasing amounts of imported sugar

The Sugar Association of the Caribbean (SAC) met on October 29, 2020 and has registered its concerns about continued undermining of the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME) for sugar.
Despite the Council for Trade and Economic Development (COTED) agreement in 2019 to tighten compliance with the Common External Tariff (CET) and the systems that govern it, individual companies continue to over-estimate their requirements for imported extra regional, CET-free sugar.

“In November 2019, COTED mandated the community to introduce a monitoring mechanism to tighten control of sugar imports. So far, this has not materialised. In recent months, exaggerated requests for CET waivers under the safeguard mechanism indicate scant regard has been paid to the political sentiments expressed by COTED. In one recent case, a single manufacturer has sought permission to import around half of their country’s national annual demand,” SAC said in its statement yesterday.

The situation regarding extra regional imports of brown sugar in contravention of the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas rules has resulted in a legal challenge by Belize in the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), a move that SAC and its members have supported. SAC Chairman R. Karl James said: “Sugar industries across the Caribbean are investing to meet regional demand for sugar. It is imperative that the regulatory system to support CARICOM businesses steps up to incentivise that investment. This will lead to improved regional food security and a resurgent agro economy in the Caribbean – never more important than now facing the impacts of COVID-19 – while supporting hundreds of thousands of Caribbean livelihoods. It is ridiculous to import most of our sugar from outside the region, when Caribbean sugar is under-utilised at home”.

SAC announced that regional production for 2021 is likely to exceed 400,000 Metric Tons (MT) of sugar, far in excess of total regional demand of 280,000 MT.
“Yet traditionally only a quarter of this is utilised in the region. Sugar industries are investing to ensure that high quality, food-grade sugar is available for Caribbean products and to ensure that the regulatory mechanisms designed to support Caribbean business work for sugar as they do for other products.”
Guyana has been struggling to meet targets with four sugar estates closed by the Coalition government which is now in opposition. The new government, under Irfaan Ali, has moved to reopen three of the sugar estates, insisting that sugar is much more than profits.