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22 July 2008, www.reefertrends.com /Spanish press
A group of Latin American exporters has offered to drop tariff demands on a range of other tropical fruits in exchange for a marginal adjustment to the WTO proposal. Costa Rica, Ecuador, Panama, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Bolivia will reportedly accept a tariff that is only marginally different from the offer tabled by the WTO. According to reports in the Spanish Press the group has tabled a counter offer to the WTO’s Director General. On offer last week was an immediate drop in the import tariff from €176 per MT to €150 per MT and then a staged fall to a landing zone figure of €116 per MT on 1 January 2015.
The counter is for an immediate reduction in the tariff to €141 per MT and then a staged fall to €109 per MT by 1 January 2014. In exchange and to soften the blow to the ACP banana exporting nations the bloc is prepared to withdraw tariff reduction demands for 30 out of the 42 other tropical fruit products identified by the ACP as strategically sensitive. As part of the DDA all tropical fruit imports will see a tariff reduction of 85% in value, with the exception of those that already incur less than 25% of their import value – these products will instead be zero duty rated.
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