And while those roads can't be fixed fast enough - that's not the only urgency in the cane industry. As we've been reporting, the sugar cane is at a crisis crossroads. Global prices for sugar have crashed - and it has resulted in a major cut in earnings for Belize's cane farmers. Their only hope now is that ASR/BSI can market what are called direct consumption sugars to CARICOM. This sugar would be traded under beneficial CSME tariff provisions. But there is a problem; many CARICOM producers want the European sugar. Belize has been to COTED to lobby for the introduction of this DC sugar to local Caribbean markets but there is that native resistance:..
Rt. Hon. Dean Barrow- Prime Minister
"What we are tempting to do is to expand the CARICOM Market for the direct consumption of sugars. If we can get COTED, the relevant agency of CARICOM, to recommend to heads of government that the common external tariff, the CARICOM Common External Tariff, be applied to the refined sugars which are coming into the region. Then our plantation white will be substituted for those refined sugars. And that is a huge market that will immediately send up the prices for our cane farmers. It has been a tough road to go because the confectioners, the soft drink makers, they don't want to let go of the imported refined white. Every effort has been made to show them that our plantation white is just as good. If there is any difference it is infinitesimal."
CARICOM Heads of Government have agreed to add the requisite tariffs to European direct consumptions sugars and the Secretariat is now working out the details.
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