EU widens door for Jordanian farm exports
Jordan Times - 01/03/2006
EU widens door for Jordanian farm exports
AMMAN — The Kingdom and the European Union (EU) launched an agricultural trade agreement on Tuesday to increase the Kingdom’s agricultural exports to European markets.
"This agreement is the achievement of one of the objectives set out in the Association Agreement between Jordan and the EU, which entered into force on May 1, 2002," an EU statement said.
The deal completely opens the EU markets for all Jordanian agricultural products except seven products that will be subjected to duty-free quotas, indicated Nasser Shraideh, international cooperation director at the Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation.
"These duty-free quotas will allow Jordan to increase its exports from the agricultural sector to the EU countries as the taxes and quotas imposed on most of the agricultural products will be removed except for seven products," he explained, noting that in 2004, the Kingdom’s farm exports to the EU stood at JD4.1 million.
From January 2005 until the end of November, the Kingdom’s exports amounted to JD9 million, Shraideh remarked. The seven products benefiting from duty-free quotas are fresh cut flowers, new potatoes, garlic, cucumber and gherkins, citrus fruits, strawberries and virgin olive oil.
According to Shraideh, export quotas of these products during 2006 will be: 1,000 tonnes of fresh cut flowers, 1,000 tonnes of new potatoes, 1,000 tonnes of garlic, 2,000 tonnes of cucumber and gherkins, 1,000 tonnes of citrus fruits, 500 tonnes of strawberries and 2,000 tonnes of virgin olive oil.
Except for garlic, the quotas of these products will increase each year until 2010.
From 2010 on, all the above-mentioned specific products will be finally allowed to enter the EU market duty-free, except cut-flowers and virgin olive oil. These two products will still benefit however of very generous duty-free quotas of 12,000 tonnes, according to Shraideh.
Planning and International Cooperation Minister Suhair Al-Ali, Agriculture Minister Akef Zu’bi and head of the European Commission Delegation in Amman, Robert van der Meulen, attended the launching ceremony.
Al-Ali expressed hope that the increase of farm exports would raise the trade volume between the Kingdom and the EU and called on the private sector to benefit from this deal.
