AGRICULTURE Minister Noel Holder will be heading a delegation to Jamaica, where he is expected to attend a high level Caribbean Sugar Policy Workshop in Kingston, which opens today.

The event has been organised jointly by the Sugar Association of the Caribbean, CARICOM and other partners from inside and beyond the region, the Ministry of Agriculture said in a release. The meetings will focus on challenges and risks facing regional sugar producers in light of changes to the European Union (EU) sugar regime. Participants will listen to the experiences of sugar producing states, including Guyana, and suggest possible mitigating actions.

Issues that will be addressed during the first session of conference are: the 2017 EU sugar reform and short-term threats on the Caribbean sugar industry; ways in which countries can access new markets; managing the politics of transforming the industry and ways in which the industry can respond to the trends as it relates to sugar consumption.

The second day will see participants developing policy responses by addressing trade and tariff policy options open to Caribbean policy makers and policy measures that Caribbean policy-makers can adopt to support a viable sugar industry. The third day is scheduled to facilitate a high-level ministerial sugar stake-holders group meeting to address what can be done at that level to influence a positive change in the industry.

While Minister Holder is expected to present on the final day of the conference, GuySuCo’s Chief Executive Officer, Errol Hanoman, will be making presentations on the challenges facing Guyana’s sugar industry and government’s planned interventions by way of diversification. Jamaica, Belize, Guyana and the Dominican Republic are listed as top producers in the Caribbean.

However, many other nations are directly impacted by a number of debilitating factors, chief among which is the removal of the preferential quotas to the EU. These changes are set to take effect in October this year. The scrapping of national sugar production quotas for Europe is expected to result in a reduction of the price paid for sugar from the African Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP), while causing the overall volume of EU sugar imports to fall as Europe becomes self-sufficient.

Caribbean sugar producers will now be forced to sell their sugar on the world market, competing with beet sugar producers at prices significantly lower than what was formerly enjoyed with the preferential EU market. This combined with the existing problems facing Caribbean producers, could jeopardise the industry in the region, provided urgent interventions are not devised in the short term.

Today’s meeting in Jamaica seeks to provide an opportunity for sugar producing Caribbean nations to present their cases, outlining the unique challenges facing them individually, while devising strategies to collectively move forward.

Meanwhile, a Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC) article said the sugar officials fear that the end will lead to a fall in prices and a decrease in sugar imports from the African Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) states, with particular impact on Caribbean producers.

“With our exports still focused on EU markets, the Caribbean sugar industry faces a period of instability and change, and must urgently adapt in order to meet the challenge of competing with other sugar producing nations worldwide, which have lower production costs or in a global market that is heavily distorted by trade barriers and government support,” said Karl James, the chairman of the Sugar Association of the Caribbean (SAC).

“The prospect of the exit of the United Kingdom from the EU further adds to the uncertainty ahead. The focus must be on identifying the practical next steps that we in the industry, and our governments, can take as priority measures to reinvigorate our sugar sector and provide it with the means to prosper and grow in the 21st Century.”

“We look forward to taking forward with our partners in government, the policy recommendations from this important workshop to give the sugar industry in the Caribbean a positive future,” he added. The two-day meeting which begins on Thursday is being held in collaboration with the Caribbean Council, the Guyana-based Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat and the Jamaica promotions Corporation (JAMPRO).

The meeting is being funded by the EU, UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, ASR Group, and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and will bring together industry leaders and policy-makers for an in-depth discussion on how the Caribbean sugar industry now needs to adapt to the new market realities. Delegates will also discuss the policy options which are available to both industry and regional governments. The recommendations of the industry workshop will be presented to the Sixth Meeting of the CARICOM Stakeholders on Sugar, which will be convened by the CARICOM Secretariat and held here on Friday.