| BANFF, Alta. -- With world sugar prices at historic lows and
subsidies in the billions of dollars, an international alliance of sugar
growers and millers last week called on governments to include sugar in
their trade liberalization efforts.
Bruce Vaughan of Queensland Sugar in Australia told an Oct. 10 news
conference that subsidies and trade restrictions make sugar trade one of
the most distorted in the world.
Yet it has not been a major item in previous efforts to negotiate trade
liberalization.
"We believe there should be a broad agricultural trade
liberalization deal and we are determined to make sugar a part of
it," he said after a Banff meeting of the revitalized Global Alliance
for Sugar Trade Reform and Liberalization.
It held its meeting in the Alberta resort town, hosted by Alberta's
sugar beet producers, to coincide with an Oct. 11-12 Cairns Group meeting.
The alliance called for "fundamental reform" of trade rules
to eliminate sugar export subsidies, production-distorting domestic
support and border barriers.
Many of the world's sugar producers are in developing countries. They
are hit hard when richer countries subsidize producers and drive down
world prices, while erecting barriers to imports of cheaper sugar.
Phisit Pakkasem from the Federation of Thai Sugar Millers said a
decline in sugar prices last year reduced incomes for Thailand's sugar
farmers by $380 million (Cdn).
South African Sugar Association representative Tony Ardington noted
that during the past three years, "the world price has fallen to the
lowest it has ever been."
During those years, because of subsidy and protection, sugar production
in the United States increased by two million tonnes.
Meanwhile, production fell in Brazil and Australia, which have lower
production costs, because prices were too low and there was little
government support.
If this trend continues, Ardington complained, "you will get a
situation where production will be concentrated in the highest cost and
least efficient countries."
Vaughan, who is chair of the international alliance, estimated that
sugar prices would increase 40 percent if trade distortions ended.
In its communiqué and in many of the members' comments, much of the
criticism was aimed at the European Union.
However, Sandra Marsden of the Canadian Sugar Institute said the
Americans also limit imports and produce a subsidized surplus that could
flood the Canadian market if the Canadian International Trade Tribunal
drops a protective tariff now under review next month. That would
devastate Alberta's sugar beet industry.
"We agree the Europeans depress prices with their production, but
we have problems with the Americans as well." |