As I observed last week, with stunning condescension the European Union (EU) Ambassador, at the signing ceremony for the agreement on “EU budgetary support for Guyana’s ailing sugar industry” was reported in the press as remarking: “Sugar is the industry of the future.” He was also reported as stating: “that with the new scheme of the world economy, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) forced the EU to review its preference mechanisms that were applied to countries like Guyana, across the world” (Guyana Times, May 25, 2012).
Indeed, it was further reported that the Ambassador went on to state: “We [EU] were forced/pressed to move from the preferential regime to that one, [sic] but doing that we tried to do it at least in a smooth way” (ibid). The Accompanying Measures described last week was as he asserted: “Geared at helping the governments of the countries involved to deal with the new situation of price cuts.”
These words contrast starkly with the explanation that I offered for the EU’s denunciation of the Sugar Protocol (SP). They also speak volumes to the conundrum, which I presented last week: Does the EU’s interest in Guyana’s sugar go further than ensuring that when GuySuCo expires, it does so slowly? In other words, it dies the death of a thousand cuts!
The new conundrum that arises this week is whether the EU is engaged in deliberately throwing good money after bad. Several experts have queried: are there not better ways to use the funding provided by the EU assistance for constructive agricultural development? At the moment the EU seems bent on distributing “conscience money” to
