The Canary Islands has claimed the European Union’s reported new trade deal with Colombia, which is said to include the offer of a preferential banana tariff of €75 per tonne, poses a “serious threat” to the future of the island’s banana sector.
According to the regional government of the Canary Islands, the EU has offered the reduced tariff for Colombian banana imports, compared with the current €176 per tonne for Latin American bananas, as part of an agreement of association.
In a statement, the Spanish region’s government urged the Spanish national authorities to defend the interests of the archipelago, claiming that if the offer was extended to other Latin American countries, the Canaries industry would be “seriously affected”.
The reported offer to Colombia follows an agreement between the EU and Latin American banana exporting countries on 15 December last year, for the reduction of the present tariff level of €176 to €148 per tonne. Under the terms of the agreement, the tariff would gradually be lowered until it reached €114 by 2017.
However, the Canaries government said that the offer to Colombia puts this agreement in jeopardy, claiming that the lower tariff level could be extended to other Latin American countries that are currently negotiating their own trade deals with Europe.
The regional government argued that the lower tariffs could lead to a “loss in competitiveness” for Canaries bananas; a situation that it claimed was already developing with the fall in returns for the islands’ fruit during January and February this year.
During the first five weeks of this year, traditionally the time of highest prices for Canaries bananas in the Spanish domestic market, the islands’ authorities said that there had been a 40 per cent fall in returns compared with the same period a year before.
Producers, it added, had already been forced to remove some fruit from the market to avoid an even greater collapse in prices.
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