Home  News Regional News EPA will save banana industry
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EPA will save banana industry |
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Sunday, 12 October 2008 |
ROSEAU - Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit told banana farmers Wednesday that failure to sign the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the European Union (EU) would result in the failure of the banana sector.
"At present we have a trading arrangement with the EU, which is not in conformity with the WTO [World Trade Organization] rules," Skerrit said in an address to hundreds of farmers at the Annual General Meeting of the Dominica Banana Producers Limited (DBPL).
"If we fail as a region, to regularize our trading arrangement with the European Union by way of the EPA, any county in the ACP [African, Caribbean and Pacific grouping of countries] can go to the WTO and report that we in the Windward Islands are selling our bananas illegally."
Local farmers and the Windward Island Farmers Association have expressed reservations but Skerrit told farmers that the accord was their best interest.
He said not signing the trade deal would mean sanctions on banana exports to the EU from Dominica.
"It is in that sense that the government maintains that we need to sign the EPA to protect the farmers of Dominica first and foremost," Skerrit said.
According to Skerrit, stakeholders in the sector should be looking at ways to save the industry.
"We need to stop the bickering and stop the fighting because at the end of the day the only people who are going to be affected are the hard working farmers of Dominica," Skerrit stated.
Last Tuesday non-governmental organizations here reiterated their opposition to signing of the EPA, arguing that the country needed more time to learn about the implications of the agreement.
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