Spain: Banana imports from ACP countries still on the rise

The EU banana sector, represented by the European Association of Banana Producers (APEB), made up of representatives of associations of banana producer organizations in the outermost regions of Spain, France and Portugal, met in Paris last Thursday to take a new step in the sector's defence in the face of the goals set for 2020.

One of the main objectives of the work meeting, in which the Canary banana sector was represented by ASPROCAN, has been the monitoring of the development of prices, production volumes and imports from third countries so far in 2017. In this regard, it has been highlighted that Nicaragua has already exceeded the alert level as far as compliance with the quotas established is concerned, as it is already above 80% of the limit in just 5 months. In the case of the Spanish market, there has been an analysis of the development of imports, which has served to highlight the continuous growth trend of shipments from ACP countries, which supply the European market without any tariffs and are beneficiaries of important community aid to banana production.

Regular talks have been held in recent times between the Directorate-General for Agriculture and the European Union's Directorate-General for Trade, in which three areas of interest have been highlighted.

Firstly, representatives of the APEB have analysed the different scenarios that the sector could face ahead of Brexit. One of them is the likely diversion of the exports that had so far been made to the United Kingdom from third countries, and which could be redirected to countries of the European Union as a result of the new tariff policies of the UK. In that case, the supply pressure of third countries in the EU is estimated to increase by approximately 425,000 tonnes.

Secondly, the sector has made progress in the project that it embarked on more than a year ago to defend the more than 30,000 jobs in the banana sector in the outermost regions by 2020.

Lastly, the APEB has emphasised the impact of the negotiation that is currently under way for the modification of the EU regulation for organic-labelled products. The text currently under discussion would allow the granting of the European Bio-label to products sold by third countries without complying with the production standards required for EU products. The APEB is working in this area together with various associations of several European agricultural subsectors.