June 12, 2006

US rejects Mexico's bid to review Nafta on corn
 

The US government has rejected a request by Mexico to delay the 2008 opening of the market for white corn and beans under the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), Mexico's agriculture minister said Friday (Jun 9).

Francisco Mayorga gave a press conference after meeting with US Undersecretary for Agriculture JB Penn.

"The response of the US government is that it isn't possible," Mayorga said, according to a transcript on the ministry web site. "The Mexican government has also expressed on numerous occasions its decision to honor the trade commitments it has signed with different countries," he added.

Mexico's mostly small corn and bean growers have been lobbying the government for an extended deadline for the opening of the market, and last month the government asked its Nafta partners, the US and Canada, to reconsider certain aspects of liberalization.

"We have no interest in renegotiating any parts of the agreement," Penn said Friday.

The official noted that Mexico was the second-largest recipient of US agricultural products after Canada, and said the US Department of Agriculture was keen to help make the transition as smooth as possible.

Mayorga said there have been contacts between bean growers in some Mexican states with their counterparts in Idaho and Michigan for cooperation such as the exchange of new varieties and the introduction of harvesting technologies in Mexico.

Nafta went into effect in 1994 with gradual timetables for the elimination of import tariffs on different goods, and agricultural tariffs among the last to be removed. Also in 2008, the US market will be completely open to Mexican sugar imports.