Minister of Agriculture Dr Leslie Ramsammy has welcomed the extension of the European Union (EU) sugar quota from 2015 to 2020, which he credited to a major lobbying effort by Guyana and other ACP countries.
“There has been extensive lobbying and many in Guyana and the Caribbean believed that the Government and the other Governments that joined in the lobby were wasting their time that the Europeans will not extend their time beyond 2016. We believed that the European leaders would have listened to reason,” the minister said, according to a Government Information Agency (GINA) report.
The European Parliament voted on Monday to extend the sugar quota to 2020 after the existing arrangement for it to end in 2015 was changed.
According to Dr Ramsammy, after extensive petitioning the Europeans had indicated that they were not willing to extend the quota beyond 2016. “In other words they would have given a one-year extension. Guyana was vigorous in our lobby and at an African, Caribbean and Pacific Group (ACP) meeting that was shared by our Foreign Affairs Minister; the ACP countries had started a lobby that the quota arrangement should not come to an end in 2015 or in 2016. We should at minimum extend it to 2020 and even beyond,” he said.
The Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) launched in 1973, initially stated that the sugar protocol was indefinite. It was designed to compensate countries such as Guyana, which had, for hundreds of years, supported the economies of developed
