On Thursday, the head of the European Commission in Belize, HE Ambassador Marco Mazzocchi--Alemanni signed over thirteen million dollars in funding to improve competitiveness in the banana and sugar industries. Sounds grand, but it's actually just staying alive money for an industry that experts say will wither without European subsidies that are being phased out. On Friday and Saturday, Mazzocchi-Alemanni was out in the fields seeing how the money will be spent. We were in Independence Village on Friday as he toured communities and banana field there.
Alfonso Noble Reporting,
Ambassador Alemanni's tour of the banana industry took him to farms where he got to see first hand the operations for which the European Union has committed 5 point four million dollars to ensure the industry is competitive in the post subsidy era.
Ambassador Marco Mazzocchi-Alemanni
"We have committed for the time being fifty four million Belizean dollars to the banana industry to help it face competition from other countries that do not have the same type of relationship with the European Union. The program is going to run for a few more years, there are going to be more installments and I think in five to six years time, it will be phased out and I hope that by that time, the banana of your country will be fully self-sufficient and not needing special support anymore."
But as the EU puts money into improving the banana sector it is also going to be funding the sugar industry. European, which is also a former beneficiary of European subsidies. But with trade liberalization that's also being phased out, and Mazzocchi says the EU will see to it that the industry does not flounder.
Ambassador Marco Mazzocchi-Alemanni,
"Sugar is of course a great concern to us because we are also phasing out commercial support for sugar, not just for Belize for all the sugar countries of the ACP Group and this is why as of last year, we started helping financially with program money for the sugar industry like we're doing now with bananas here, we have been doing for a number of years. The sugar company measures, we started with them last year with this which I just had the honor of signing with Prime Minister Musa yesterday for three million Euros. But this is just the beginning and as of the 2007 financial allocation, the amount will become much much more important. This money is just not meant to be for cane growers or sugar producers, it is meant for the national development of the whole country. Of course we are doing to try and help as much as possible the sugar area by itself, we are going to try and concentrate our help there without ignoring the rest of the country. And certainly we of course very involved in that diversification and I see that your country has a tremendous potential beyond agriculture, beyond bananas, beyond sugar, also in other sectors."
But even as the union is investing heavily in the banana and sugar industries Mazzocchi says they are mindful of the social costs that competitiveness brings.
Ambassador Marco Mazzocchi-Alemanni
"We should not modernize or make our industries competitive at just any social cost, we certainly have to maintain social standards. We must make sure that social conditions remain viable, remain livable."
That's the priority and though preparations are underway complete with funding for the sustainability of the sugar and banana industries, Mazzocchi adds that preferential treatment for these industries is not yet over.
Ambassador Marco Mazzocchi-Alemanni,
"Preferential treatment is not really coming to an end. There is still preferential treatment and there will be. The whole issue is the extent of that preference and of course about the extent of the preference, we are fighting. We are fighting the WTO so we are fighting, we are on the same side, and of course there are other who have a difference interest because they are not within the ACP world so they have a different commercial interest. They are also our friends but we have a different trading relationship with them."
And while the EU still shares friendship with non ACP countries, by its monetary assistance to Belize it's proving that friendship is one thing and competition is another.
Since the inception of Europe's banana support programme in June 1999, Belize has been allocated more than fifty four million Belize dollars.
