CASTRIES, St Lucia (CMC):
EXPORTS OF bananas from St. Lucia fell to a record low in 2005 as more farmers left the industry as a result of increased competition, according to a report from the Windward Islands Banana Development and Exporting Company (WIBDECO).
The company states that the decline was also due to the region's looming loss of preferential treatment in the key European market.
St. Lucia exported 30,970 tons (28,096 metric tons) of the fruit, a 28 per cent decline from 2005.
Dr. Errol Reid, the regional banana organisation's Technical Service Director, said the main factor in the decrease was economic uncertainty, as the European Union (EU), under pressure from the World Trade Organisation devises new tariffs that will be less preferential to Caribbean and African banana producers.
Reid said unfavourable weather and leaf spot disease also contributed to the decline in production.
LESS BANANA FARMERS
Exports hit a high of 133,777 tons (121,360 metric tons) in 1990 and have been dropping ever since that period. There are now fewer than 2,000 banana farmers in the country compared to more than 10,000 in the early 1990s, he said.
The EU's system of tariffs and quotas had favoured former colonies in the Caribbean and Africa over large-scale growers in Latin American who successfully argued to the WTO that the arrangement is unfair. Negotiators are now trying to work out a new system.
