Jamaican officials have described the WTO rejection of the proposed EU banana tariffs as “devastating”.
Roger Clarke, agriculture minister, said the move only serves to deepen the worries of the local agriculture sector, plunging it into further uncertainty.
“It is not good news for us as far as our banana export industry is concerned,” Clarke told Jamaica’s Sunday Observer.
He said the country had been pinning its hopes on a tariff regime that would ensure survival.
The WTO ruled, last week, that the EU’s planned overhaul of its import rules would not maintain market access for Latin American producers - the second such ruling in three months.
The EU was pushing for a tariff of €187 per tonne imported from Latin America, with a duty-free quota of 775,000t of bananas from ACP regions.
Jamaican producers are now calling on the EU to find a solution “as a matter of urgency”.
The WTO ruling has been criticised by Marshall Hall, chair of the Caribbean Banana Exporters Association. He told the Observer that the decision “is a monumental disaster for the African, Caribbean and Pacific banana-supplying countries”.
Dominica 's foreign affairs minister Charles Savarin was reported as saying the decision raises concerns as "to whether small countries can continue to compete and trade".
He added: "It seems we have no place in the multilateral trading system, which is confining and consigning small, vulnerable developing countries to the dustbin, forcing them to be dependent on alms and handouts, rather than embracing them and enabling them to forge their own path to development.”
