African Cotton Growing Countries Visit U.S. to Discuss Trade Practices
July 31, 2009 Recently four representatives from the four major cotton-producing countries in the African continent – Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali – were in the U.S. to discuss what they call engagement of unfair trade practices.
The Trade Ministers of the so called Cotton-4 or C-4 countries jointly addressed a press conference, which was coordinated by the Trade Minister of Burkina Faso, Mamadou Sanou. He said the cotton sector in the African continent had been greatly impacted by the subsidies doled out to the cotton farmers in the U.S. and EU and they have come to Washington with a very high hope.
He pointed to the 2005 WTO agreement, which makes it mandatory on each of the member countries to reduce their subsidies and want to reach an agreement with the U.S .that it will reduce the subsidies.
Mamadou said the proposal to reduce the extent of cotton subsidies paid out by the U.S. government to its cotton farmers had been lying on the table for quite a long while without any dialogue or response. He also said that their attempts to hammer out an agreement at the WTO talks had failed to take off. They are hoping that it will be sorted out at November’s WTO ministerial conference in Geneva.
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