Ecuador has said it is ready to take the EU to a World Trade Organisation disputes panel over the €176 tariff regime introduced on January 1, this year as political pressure mounts in the country for action.
Trade minister Roberto Illingworth told WTO director general Pascal Lamy that the current tariff level is too high to guarantee profitability for the Andean nation’s banana producers. The new minister who has only been in post a matter of days, also met with WTO ambassadors from Colombia, Costa Rica and Guatemala in Geneva.
Export and grower groups have been frustrated as the government has dragged its heels on the issue and failed so far to appoint legal counsel for the action as three trade ministers have held office over the past six weeks.
“We are still waiting and wasting time,” Eduardo Ledesma of the banana exporters’ association AEBE told the Ecuadorian press. “Sooner rather than later we are going to lose the EU market and all we have are individual company positions on the issue and not a national one.”
Meanwhile, African nations such as Cameroon are fearful that any change to the EU regime will seriously hinder their position on the market. Cameroonian trade minister Luc Magloire Mbarga Atangana said that lowering the tariff substantially would “sacrifice” the banana industry in his country.
The Latin American nations view their counterparts in Africa as a real threat on the EU marketplace.
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