A two-day meeting between Africa, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries has ended with the trading bloc vowing to fight further attempts from Latin American growers to cut EU import tariffs on their bananas.

The meeting took place in the capital of Cameroon on Monday and Tuesday.

ACP banana producers fear that lowering the tariff would squeeze them out of the European market, to the favour of cheaper Latin American bananas, which already benefit from government subsidies.

Ecuador, the world’s largest banana exporter, hopes to restart talks with the EU in October, when it will try to persuade the bloc to reduce import tariffs on Latin American fruit.

Proposals such as this were put forward in July but fell apart at WTO trade talks. The suggested deal would have cut EU import tariffs of €176 (£140) per tonne of bananas to €114 by 2016. This angered ACP growers.

Eric de Lucy, president of the banana producers’ union of Guadeloupe and Martinique, said at the Cameroon meeting: “We hope negotiations start again, but we are fighting so that those negotiations do not end well for the Latin Americans and badly for us.”

The Cameroon meeting ended with the Yaounde Appeal, which called for a negotiated, balanced and permanent agreement.

Opening the meeting on Monday, Cameroon trade minister Luc Magloire Mbarga Atangan said: “Now is the time for ACP countries to ask banana producers in Latin and Central America to sit down around the negotiating table with the aim of arriving at a mutually acceptable compromise.”

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