Knowledge for Development

Mobilizing innovation: Sugar Protocol countries adapting to new market realities

Author: Johannes Rosebomm

Date: 10/01/2008

Introduction:

The EU Sugar Reform has negative consequences for the sugar industries in Sugar Protocol (SP) countries as their export revenues will decline sharply. In order to adapt to new market realities the EU is offering the SP countries a significant development assistance package (€ 1.2 billion) to restructure their industries as well as various other forms of assistance. One of them is a five-year ACP sugar research programme to be funded by the European Development Fund. This programme aims to improve the overall competitiveness of the sugar industry in ACP countries (and in particular in the SP countries among them) in order to survive in a less-protected global sugar market. At the same time, the Everything-But-Arms (EBA) agreement has created new opportunities for sugar-producing EBA countries to export to the EU sugar market.

(This article was published in Development Economics between Markets and Institutions: Incentives for growth, food security and sustainable use of the environment, edited by Erwin Bulte and Ruerd Ruben. Wageningen:Wageningen Academic Publishers, 2007).


 


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Wageningen Academic Publishers, 2007