§ Mr. Nicholas WintertonTo ask the Secretary of State for International Development what assessment she has made of the likely impact of the EU Trade Directorate's draft regulation on Least and Less Developed Country products on the Caribbean rice industry. [139349]
§ Mr. FoulkesWe do not expect the draft regulation to produce any large-scale increase in LDC rice imports in to the EU. LDCs represented 0.2 per cent. of rice imports into the EU in 1998 and less than 0.01 per cent. of rice imports into the United States. Guyana alone exported 40 times more rice to the EU than all of the LDCs combined. The draft regulation would give insufficient price incentive for any significant response from LDC producers.