Africa and Caribbean fear EU Latam banana tariff cuts

By Tansa Musa

YAOUNDE (Reuters) - Banana producers in African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries will fight fresh attempts by Latin American growers to obtain cuts in European Union import tariffs for their fruit, ACP members said on Tuesday.

If EU tariffs are lowered, ACP banana producers fear they could find themselves squeezed out of the European market by cheaper Latin American bananas, which already benefit from government subsidies.

World number one banana exporter Ecuador hopes to restart talks with the EU in October, when it will try to persuade the bloc to reduce the import tariffs its producers must pay to sell into Europe.

Such a deal was briefly agreed in July, but fell apart as wider free trade talks at a World Trade Organisation meeting collapsed.

"We hope negotiations start again, but we are fighting so that those negotiations do not end well for the Latin Americans and badly for us," said Eric de Lucy, president of the banana producers' union of Guadeloupe and Martinique.

He was speaking after a two-day meeting between ACP and EU banana producers, the first such gathering in Africa, in the capital of major African grower Cameroon on Tuesday.

The meeting concluded with the "Yaounde Appeal," which called for a specific, negotiated, balanced and long-lasting agreement to bring to an end the so-called "banana wars".

DEFUNCT DEAL