US adjusts sugar quotas

■ N a complex move the United States adjusted upwards its Hsugar quota for Fiji and Papua New Guinea while extending the quota time period. The gross value of the decision comes to about US$3.B million for Fiji and US$2.7 million for Papua New Guinea, relatively small numbers when compared against total sale of each na tion.

Over the last few years, the US has cut back generally, but not smoothly, on im ports of sugar (out of deference to domestic growers of sugar cane and sugar beet). It also has varied the time periods of importation, and, to add an extra complication, now uses the metric tonne about 2200 pounds) not the tradi tional short ton (2000 pounds).

Effective September 30, the United States extended the time period of the current sugar quota from a 12-month period to a 21-month one, now ending on September 30, 1990. At the same time raised its quotas on a roughly prop

ortional basis, with Fiji going from 9417 tonnes to 16966 tonnes, and PNG from 7258 tonnes to 12500. (As recently as the 12 months of calendar 1987, Fiji’s quota was 25,190 short tons.) By the time the higher quotas were announced, the two nations had shipped their sugar. They now will to have to ship about 7500 and 5200 tonnes respectively; this is about half-a-ship’s load of sugar.

The gross value of the additional quotas is calculated against the current price of bulk raw sugar in New York, 23 cents a pound at the time of writing, In one of the many anomalies of the US sugar trade, the politically powerful sugar growers in Florida not only grow it for a protected domestic market, they bring Caribbean farm workers (usually from sugar-producing islands) to cut the cane in the US at wages that do not attaract American workers to the crop, This is essentially a double subsidy for a crop that critics say should be grown in the Third, not the First World. □