Introduction
The world sugar prices for the period 1960 to 2013, which I presented last week, were formed in the ‘free market,’ where the sugar bought and sold is not subject to governmental regulation and control. Over the past six decades, however, Guyana’s sugar exports have been sold elsewhere, in the special regulated markets of the European Community, EC, (about 80 per cent); Caricom (about 15 per cent); and the United States (about 5 per cent).
Modern export to the EC market can be traced to 1951, when Britain established the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement (CSA) in order to secure its sugar supplies from colonial and ex-colonial producers, at a time of feared global commodity shortages. Later, however, after Britain joined the EC, the CSA was subsumed in 1975 into the EC-African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group of countries, Sugar Protocol (SP). Later on, the SP was independently incorporated into the successive Lomé Conventions (I-IV) between the EC and the ACP, and eventually their successor, the Cotonou Agreement in 2000.
Sugar Protocol
The SP had several special features, including 1) it was framed as a legal (treaty) obligation of the EC to purchase 1.3 million metric tonnes of sugar from specified ACP member countries through agreed pre-determined quotas; 2) beneficiaries of ACP quotas were obligated to provide the agreed quantities of sugar, subject to
