The office of the United States Trade Representative published (USTR for its acronym in English) excluded Nicaragua from the list of 40 countries that were assigned the annual sugar import quota agreed with the World Trade Organization (WTO) .
By April 2022, the USTR had already excluded the country from the reallocation of the additional sugar quota for fiscal year 2022, which would now be the second strong “blow” in the Nicaraguan economy by completely separating it from the total quota. from 2023, which also affects private entrepreneurs.
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Article 66 He managed to contact Mario Amador, president of the National Committee of Sugar Producers (CNPA), who confirmed the decision of the Joe Biden government, but did not refer to the case any further, claiming that he was in a meeting.
However, in statements to the newspaper La Prensa, the same businessman said that they trust that the announcement published this Wednesday, July 20, is an error, for which they are seeking a response from the United States Embassy in Managua and with the authorities of the government of Daniel Ortega.
In addition, he indicated that this is a quota assigned to the country and not to the sector, and that it is the government that assigns it to the sugar sector. “We will have to see what the government is going to do,” he said.
Nicaragua out of 40 countries
The document disclosed by the USTR indicates that it is providing notice of country-by-country allocations for fiscal year 2023 (October 1, 2022 through September 30, 2023) “in-quota quantities of tariff-rate quotas (TRQs) for cane sugar imported raw and sugar-containing products’.
It adds that the amount of the raw cane sugar tariff quota for fiscal year 2023 is 1,117,195 metric tonswhich is the minimum amount to which the United States is committed under the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement.
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The Central American countries —except Nicaragua— that will receive a sugar quota to export to the United States under preferential conditions in the 2023 fiscal period are El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras and Panama.
The other 35 that complete the list are Argentina, Australia, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Congo (Brazzaville), Cote d’Ivoire, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Eswatini, Fiji, Gabon, Guyana, Haiti, India, Jamaica. , Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mexico, Mozambique, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, South Africa, St. Kitts & Nevis, Taiwan, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay, Zimbabwe.
The exclusion of Nicaragua, according to Amador, causes some 22,000 tons of sugar to remain “in the air” (equivalent to some nine million dollars in income to the country), which cannot be exported to China either because the early harvest recently announced by the Ortega government, left out Nicaraguan sugar.
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The decision of the United States to leave Nicaragua out of the annual sugar quota is known after the speech of the dictators Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo during their celebration of the 43rd anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution, where they ranted against that country, calling it “enemies of The humanity”.
This means of communication tried to communicate with César Zamora, president of the Superior Council of Private Enterprise (Cosep) to find out the economic impact that this exclusion will have for the country, however, he did not answer the phone call.
