(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana)    PRIME Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Hon. Gaston Browne, called on the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) to jointly and aggressively address the EU policy to end the existing cap on European sugar beet production from the end of next year. He also called for action to avert the potential threat to the Region’s banking sector, given its label as a “high risk area for financial services”.The Prime Minister who is the Immediate Past Chairman of CARICOM was last Thursday, 26th February, addressing the 26th Inter-sessional Conference of Heads of Government, which ends today in Nassau, the Bahamas.

Prime Minister Browne drew attention to the implications of the EU’s policy decision which, at the end of next year, will allow European beet sugar production to flood the EU market; displacing sugar exports, unable to compete with heavy subsidies given to the EU beet sugar producers.

“The British Department for International Development is reported to have predicted that this `perfect storm’ of the new EU beet sugar policy, and the consequent low, subsidised price, will force 6.4 million people in African, Caribbean and Pacific countries into poverty over the next five years”, he said.

He noted the significant impact to Caribbean sugar producing nations such as Barbados, Belize, Guyana, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic, stating “Caribbean sugar workers will be forced into subsistence agriculture and will face the danger of extreme poverty”.

In highlighting the challenge  to create new markets and retrain and retool farmers in other crops in the space of the year,  the  Prime Minister  emphasised  that the issue must be resolved and, in this context, be  collectively taken up aggressively with the EU at the highest levels.

The devastating implications of the Region’s banking sector label as ‘high-risk area for financial services”, was also raised by Prime Minister Browne.  According to him, banks in the United States and Europe are being made to evaluate risks versus rewards when doing business with CARICOM indigenous banks and banks within its offshore sector.

“Because in many cases indigenous banks cannot provide a high level of reward, correspondent banks are closing their relationships with them – all because an arbitrary an unsubstantiated claim is being made that the Caribbean is a high risk area for financial services”, he stated.

The Prime Minister cautioned “unless this situation is addressed with urgency, the indigenous banks in each of our countries will be forced to close their doors, not because of any inherent difficulties in the banks themselves, but because they are constrained from transacting business abroad”. He called on the Conference to establish a committee of Finance Ministers to address this urgent issue, which he described as calamitous to the Region’s economies.

CARICOM’s Strategic Plan identifies the building of economic resilience – stabilisation and sustainable economic growth and development as one of eight strategic priorities for attention over the next five years (2015-2019).