The Brazilian Rice Industry Association (Abiarroz) is promoting increased actions to help the governments of Brazil and Mexico to resume negotiations for the expansion of the Economic Complementation Agreement (ACE) nº 53 to open the Mexican market to Brazilian milled rice. “The binational commission will convene in the second half of this year to discuss the issue. We expect that Brazilian milled rice can benefit from the reduction in import tariffs,” says Andressa Silva, executive director of Abiarroz, highlighting the importance of access to the Mexican market for Brazil. “They consume approximately a million tonnes of rice every year.” In Mexico, the import duty for processed rice is 20%, making it impossible for Brazilian products to compete with those from the United States, Uruguay, and even Argentina, which have zero tariffs through trade agreements. In the instance of Brazil, there is only a 4% preference in an Aladi (Latin American Integration Association) agreement for the beneficiary, reducing the tariff to 16% – still too expensive to make trade viable.
Sources: AgroLink/Datamar News