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| Sunday, 10 July 2005 |
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Industrialists hail govt's efforts for EU GSP - scheme Least Developed Countries (LDCs) are shocked over the European Union's new "rules of origin", while the apparel industrialists in Sri Lanka have commended the newly achieved duty concessions for exports to the EU. The new EU rules of origin are a blow to economies of most LDCs and Pakistan will be one of the countries severely affected, Pakistan media reported. The Joint Apparel Association Forum (JAAF) of Sri Lanka last week lauded the role played by successive governments in pushing through the European Union's General System of Preference or EU GSP+ scheme. The new scheme which came into effect from July 1 enables Sri Lanka to export 7,200 products to 25 member countries of the EU at zero duty. Despite changes in government, policy remained consistent and all parties worked for the benefit of the country and finally succeeded in obtaining this vital and crucial concession, JAAF said. The GSP+ scheme is vital for the apparel industry to penetrate the EU market. Sri Lanka's garment exports to the EU market declined by 6% after the phasing out of the Multi Fibre Agreement. EU is our second largest apparel market and the value of apparel exports to EU was US$ 997.5 million in 2004. Gaining GSP concessions is a victory for the country because only 14 countries have qualified for concessions and Sri Lanka is the only Asian country among them. This is a result of the tremendous effort made by the government ministers, officials and the private sector. Several delegations visited Brussels and held several rounds of discussions with the EU Commission of Trade. In January Minister of Trade and Commerce Jeyaraj Fernandopulle called upon his counterpart, the European Commissioner for Trade, Peter Mandelson, for duty free treatment for Sri Lankan exports as an immediate measure to tide over the tsunami devastation. In January Minister Anura Bandaranaike and Minister Jeyaraj Fernandopulle led a high level delegation to the European capitals and met their counterparts. Sri Lanka received these concessions because the country is complying with 27 international conventions on governance, human rights environment and labour standards. Qualifying for concessions is a long and time consuming process with many documents. It requires a detailed status report on administrative and legislative ratification and implementation of all these conventions. The eligibility will be confirmed after assessment of the effective implementation of these conventions before the beginning of 2006. The inter ministerial committee has already completed all work leading to these obligations. Director General of the Department of Commerce K.J. Weerasinghe said that the EU GSP scheme is the most generous of all developed country GSP systems and in 2003 EU's imports under GSP totalled 52 billion Euros. EU is the largest trading partner for the world's 50 poorest countries. However, the scheme has graduation thresholds which focus on preferential
access for countries that have a lower share of EU imports. GW |
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