Brazil puts a figure on the cost of EU export change
04/04/2014
In 2013, the Brazilian leather sector achieved record export sales of more than $2.5 billion, but Mr Bello said Brazil’s exclusion from the list of countries in the European Union’s Generalised Scheme of Preferences (GSP), which allows exporters in developing countries to pay lower duties on their exports to the EU, was one of the factors that would make it difficult to keep this level of performance up this year.
Speaking at APLF 2014 in Hong Kong on March 31, Mr Bello put a figure on how much GSP exclusion was costing Brazilian tanners. He said: “The change has made our costs between 3% and 4% higher compared to last year, so this is an important question.”
He said CICB was engaged in ongoing discussions with the Brazilian government to try to clarify this point and that his organisation had hopes for an easier trading status with the EU, perhaps as part of a proposed free trade agreement between the EU and South American trading bloc Mercosur. Negotiations are ongoing, with the most recent round of talks having taken place in October 2012. All Mercosur countries lost their GSP status at the start of 2014, with the exception of Paraguay.
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