Ecuador’s banana exporters have run out of patience and are calling on their national government to sanction the EU over its banana import regime.
The South American country’s banana exporters’ association, AEBE, wants sanctions imposed if the EU does not put an end to its tariff-based import system.
Eduardo Ledesma, AEBE’s executive director said: “Ecuador can no longer permit the EU to continue depleting the country's fragile banana industry in violation of repeated WTO rulings. It is time to act. Since the imposition of the EU’s latest WTO-illegal banana import regime in 2006, more than $1 billion-worth (£616 million) of unjust customs payments on bananas from Ecuador have been transferred into EC coffers to subsidise European growers. Incomes, revenues and investments across Ecuador have suffered, while one of the poorest countries in the world is subsidising some of the richest.”
Exporters say that unless large, enforceable tariff cuts are agreed then Ecuador should take reprisals. The Andean country - the world’s largest exporter of arguably the most popular fruit globally - has the right under international trade rules to retaliate on European goods and intellectual property rights, and AEBE is urging its government to act on that right. Ledesma said: “We will only be taken seriously if we show that we are not afraid to act.”
