7 News Belize

PM Says Fair Trade Problems Were Expected
posted (August 29, 2014)
Last night, we told you about the latest controversy in the Sugar Industry between the Cane Farmers Association and Tate and Lyle, the British company which buys their sugar overseas.

They've written to the Cane Farmers saying that they will sharply reduce the volume of sugar bought for the Fair Trade premium price. That figure is going down from fifty or sixty thousand tonnes to ten thousand tonnes.

But, that's only a reduction in the fair trade quota. But we must clarify, the company will still buy the same amount of sugar as it has done in the past - only this year, instead of paying the premium price, under the Fairtrade Agreement, on fifty thousand tonnes or more, they will only pay the premium on ten thousand tonnes.

That's a decrease of $5.7 million dollars in revenue for the cane farmers association.

And it's all because the BSCFA's Fairtrade Certification came into jeopardy after the revelation that its employees fleeced the association of $78,000 dollars. This, as we told you, was revealed in a FLO-Cert Audit a few months ago. The Association was placed on probation, and it has been decertified in the past due to child labour violations and other non-compliances.

Prime Minister Dean Barrow told the media today that he hopes that the Association will act to get back in good standing with the Fairtrade regulations:

Prime Minister Dean Barrow
"I believe that there was a suspension of the fair trade premium as a consequence of irregularities that the monitors discovered. I don't know that the Belize Sugar Cane Farmers Association has yet remedied the defects. It appears that what is happening is…number one, there is a need for that to be sorted out because if that is not sorted out there will be no fair-trade premium at all. But it seems even if that issue is squared away, there is the possibility, perhaps the likelihood that the amount of sugar to attract the fair-trade premium will be less. I will hope that the two things that need to happen will happen - that is the BSCFA will get squared away with their issues so that the suspension can be lifted and infsct it will turn out that the amount of sugar to attract the fair trade premium will not be as sharply reduced as at this moment appears to be possible."

In their letter to the Management of the BSCFA, Tate and Lyle notes that if there is a higher demand for Fairtrade sugar than the current forecasts predict, they will increase the volume of sugar that they are willing to pay the premium Fairtrade price.

The Fairtrade Agreement is a development program where European companies pay extra for products from developing countries that are responsibly harvested. Those additional monies are intended for development of the industry and for poverty alleviation for farmers.

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