Belize’s Sugar to Enter CARICOM Market?

Godwin Hulse

For some time there have been continuous efforts to get Belizean produced sugar in CARICOM and now finally there has been a breakthrough. Agriculture Minister Godwin Hulse, on Wednesday, said that throughout 2019, there were a string of meetings with the Council for Trade and Economic Development, known as COTED, at which Belize was able to convince the rest of the region that the locally produced sugar met quality standards.  Hulse says that at a COTED Agriculture meeting they were able to request for common external tariff protection for Belize’s sugar and that a monitoring be urgently implemented.

Godwin Hulse, Minister of Agriculture

“There is no reason if we could put it in coca cola, put it in our cake, out it in our ice creams, unu soft drinks, and drink it in our tea that they can’t. There is no reason why. So all the back and forth, we were able to get COTED Agriculture to agree, quality wise, once the quality is met, the external tariff will be applied meaning that those in the Caribbean who were importing from extra-regional sources would have to pay a tax. And then of course brown sugar was never a question, except that they are not buying from us, and they should be buying from us. So we got that as well to reinforce that they buy it from us or there will be some sanctions. And the third thing is a monitoring mechanism to make sure this happen. That was the COTED Agriculture. The Minister of Trade and the Attorney General’s Ministry combined and collaborated in taking it to the COTED Trade in November and they were successful. So this has been done and this has been established as the protocol going forward.”