2 february 2006 - The Management Committee for Bananas gave a favourable opinion on a European Commission proposal to open a duty-free tariff quota of 615,000 tonnes for ACP countries for the period March-December 2006. The proposal will now be put for formal approval to the Commission. Under the new rules, from March to December 2006, 468,150 tonnes will be made available on a "first come, first served" basis in five tranches of 93,630 tonnes each.
The tranches will be made available every two months. The remaining 146,850 tonnes of the tariff quota will be reserved for operators who actually imported bananas from ACP countries in 2005. The licences for these operators will be proportional to the quantities they imported from ACP countries in 2005. On 29 November 2005, the EU adopted a new "tariff-only" import regime for bananas from countries enjoying Most Favoured Nation status, applying from 1 January 2006 (see IP/05/1493). The regime also includes a duty-free annual import quota of 775,000 tonnes for bananas originating in ACP countries. To avoid disruption of trade with ACP countries before the adoption of the tariff quota for these countries, the Commission adopted in December interim measures for January and February 2006. An overall amount of 160,000 tonnes has already been made available for this period. The tariff quota proposed today (615,000 tonnes) covers the rest of 2006.