Seafood exporters hope EU tariff deal will provide much needed boost PAUL McLEOD OTTAWA BUREAU [email protected] OTTAWA — As a major free trade deal with Europe looms, seafood exports to the continent are repor¬ted to have plummeted in recent years. Annual Canadian seafood ex¬ports to the European Union fell by over $230 million from 2007 to 2012, according to government figures. The federal government says the industry will see a huge boon under the Canada-Europe free trade deal. About 95 per cent of European seafood tariffs will be removed from Canadian products. But in recent years, Europe has made up only a small fraction of the market . “Asia-Pacific is just going up like gangbusters, said Fisheries Council of Canada president Pat McGuinness. The United States is far and away the largest export market. It’s followed by China, Japan and Hong Kong. Then comes the top European country, Belgium, fol¬lowed by South Korea. Canada exported $576-million worth of seafood to Europe in 2007. By 2012, that number had fallen about 40 per cent to $343 million. That’s less than one-tenth of the over $4 billion in total seafood exports that year. The question is whether the trade deal with the European Union will reverse that trend. McGuinness said he believes it will because Europe offers a relat¬ively stable market . “With the elimination of the EU tariffs, I can see a lot of those shipments being rediverted to the EU, he said. “Russia and China are very lucrative markets but they’re high-risk markets. Like right now, we’re just going through hell with the Russian authorities. Guinness said exporters have had to jump through hoops to satisfy Russian officials who allege food-safety issues on sea¬food that has already been ap¬proved by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. But some sectors of the in¬dustry will benefit more than others. McGuinness said he expects the biggest benefit to go to the lobster processing industry centred in New Brunswick and Prince Ed¬ward Island. Tariffs of around 18 per cent on lobster meat will be phased out over five years. Nova Scotia is a leading export¬er of live lobster. That product faces a comparably light tariff of eight per cent that will be elimin¬ated. “In lobster, it’s been fairly con¬sistent except for the southern part of Europe, said Geoff Irvine, executive director of the Lobster Council of Canada. “We felt it there during the recession, but they’re bouncing back. Still, Irvine expects the agree¬ment to benefit the entire seafood industry. Nova Scotia’s statistics show there’s plenty of room for recov¬ery. From 2007 to 2012, the value of seafood exports from the province to Europe fell from $221 million to $133 million. Tariffs on European seafood products are also being elimin¬ated from the Canadian market. European Seafood imports have been steadily growing but still trail far behind exports. In 2012, Canada imported $69-million worth of seafood from Europe.
Posted on: Thu, 13 Mar 2014 12:51:53 +0000
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