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Fair Trade News Digest

Contents:

1. Why pay import tax, most productare tax exempt

2. US buyers paying more to go organic

3.  Fair Trade group help free children

Why pay import tax, most productare tax exempt
         The EU's much-trumpeted Everything But Arms (EBA) policy, which provides duty-free access for imports from the world's poorest nations, has failed so far to benefit the countries it is supposed to help, reports the Financial Times, citing a study by World Bank economist Paul Brenton. The study found that exports of most least developed countries (LDCs) to the EU fell in 2001, when the policy took effect, and that although the total value of the exports increased that year, the rise was accounted for by relatively few countries and was not attributable to the EBA.
         Few of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries, which also enjoy preferential access to the EU market under the Cotonou trade-and-aid agreement, have sought to take advantage of the EBA, even though it offers more favorable terms for some products. One reason is that the biggest benefits of the EBA will be to exporters
of bananas, sugar and rice, which will not be granted duty-free access under the scheme for several years. Half the exports from poor non-ACP countries are also not receiving the advantages of EU duty-free access, and some face average tariffs higher than those on exports from countries that do not have preferential access to the EU
market.

US buyers paying more to go organic
         Organic food sales in the United States have climbed 20 percent for five straight years, according to the Organic Trade Association headquartered in Greenfield, Massachusetts. Sales of organic foods reached $11 billion in 2002 and are projected at $13 billion in 2003. Of such foods, organic dairy was the fastest growing segment in the 1990s with sales up 500 percent between 1994 and 1999, the US Department of Agriculture said in a report in 2002. There is more toorganioc than health. Organic devoteees describe themselves as part of a socially conscious movement to"reconnect" with the food and support unadulterated,more traditional sources of food that they perceive helps the environment. Source: Reuters report in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, 10 March 2003.

Fair Trade group help free children
         The Fair Trade group led by Barbara Wyss-Schumacher of Schiers, Switzerland successfully lobbied with the Philippine Supreme Court and Department of Justice for the release of young minors detained in subhuman conditions in jails. The children were part of the 20,000 jailed children who live in subhuman condition in Philippine prisons. They are mixed at times with adult criminals and are introduced to criminal ways. Some become the sex toys of adult prisoners and sometimes the guards have been known to rape the girls. In jail they have to work to eat and are exposed to TB, AIDS and drug abuse. In some prisons the basic needs of human life and dignity are absent. Beside a chronic lack of justice, some prisons and holding cells don't even have plastic plates and spoons so the kids must eat from a newspaper with their hands. There is no water in many of the cells either to wash or cool off from the oppressively humid heat. The toilet is frequently a stinking hole in the corner, or a filthy toilet bowel or bucket with no running water. Cockroaches, mosquitoes, and rats infest the prison. The staff of the PREDA Fair Trade project conduct visits and undertake legal action and lobbying to free the children.

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