~~adz:Left~~The twin-island Caribbean nation plans to shutter the sapped business after this year's cane crop is produced, Agriculture Minister Jarrette Narine told The Associated Press.
"The prime minister agreed to shut down the sugar industry when the 2007 crop ends after the farmers asked him to do it," Narine said.
Raffique Shah, chief of the Trinidad Cane Farmers Association, said Prime Minister Patrick Manning accepted a proposal to end all sugar production in the oil-and gas-rich country, which has built one of the region's fastest-growing economies around petroleum-based exports.
"The industry is about to collapse, so let's have a soft landing for everyone," Shah said he told Manning at a Monday meeting.
The Cabinet is expected to accept the industry shutdown late Thursday, said Shah, who represents the majority of the 4,000 cane farmers who have been producing since the government closed its state-owned sugar company, Caroni Ltd., in 2003.
Shah said the country's remaining farmers have proposed that producers be paid compensation for stopping cane cultivation and expect government support when switching to another crop. He estimated that more than 22,000 acres (8,900 hectares) of cane fields would be freed for food production.
Since Caroni's closure, the nation's annual sugar production has fallen from 1.3 million metric tons (1.4 million U.S. tons) to the 400,000 metric tons (440,900 U.S. tons) expected for 2007.
Trinidad has been paying an annual US$12 million (euro9.2 million) subsidy to the industry, according to Wayne Inniss, who headed a government panel designed to assist cane farmers improve production.
Trinidad and Tobago's sugar industry was born under British rule in the 1700s, when cane harvested with slave labor was processed into sugar and rum to be sold in Britain.
Trinidad is one of several former British colonies in the Caribbean that are being squeezed out of the sugar industry due largely to the EU imposing a 36 percent cut in sugar subsidies for producers from the Caribbean, Africa and the Pacific. ~~adz:Right~~
The large subsidy cut followed a complaint to the World Trade Organization over a decades-old practice under which the EU gave former colonies preferential access to markets and paid high prices for commodities, including sugar, to encourage development.
Caribbean countries such as Guyana, Jamaica, Belize and Barbados have said the reductions were drastic and would cost them US$100 million (euro77.5 million) in annual revenues. Talks between the EU and Caribbean leaders were set for later this year to discuss possible aid.
St. Kitts ended its sugar operations in 2005, saying high production costs and the reductions have made it impossible for their industry to survive.
