The Prime Minister says Australia will not consider imposing tariffs on imported canned fruit in reponse to a request for temporary protection by SPC Ardmona.
The processor had called on the government to put temporary tariff protection in place after falling sales led it to cancel contracts with 60 fruit growers last week.
Speaking during a visit to northern Tasmania, the Prime Minister Julia Gillard said that specific tariffs risk retaliatory taxes on other agricultural exports, according to ABC Rural.
"We say 'OK, we will protect a particular producer or a particular industry with a tariff', only to find that other countries around the world who import things from Australia, including agricultural products, then retaliate with their own tariffs," she said.
Emergency safeguard actions that impose a tax on cheap imported foods where domestic industries are suffering injury are permitted under the World Trade Organisation rules.
Earlier in the week, Federal Agriculture Minister Joe Ludwig told ABC radio that he had received SPC Ardmona's application and it will now have to go through a process.
“Well of course we’ve received the information from SPC. What we do really have to do is work through that letter, work through the industry portfolio, the trade portfolio to provide that response,” he said at the time.
“So it’s too early to for me to be able to say what the response should or shouldn’t be.”
According to SPC Ardmona, market share of imported private label canned fruit has grown to 58 per cent today, while SPC Ardmona canned fruit share has declined to 33 per cent. It said its export market volumes have declined by 90 per cent in the past five years.
SPC Ardmona managing director Peter Kelly recently told growers that the company was not competing on a level playing field against the overseas-sourced private label products.
“We are competing against products from countries that have considerably lower labour and production costs and arguably lower quality standards than we have in Australia,” he said.
“A more than 50 per cent appreciation in the Australian dollar in the past four years has made cheap imported food even cheaper and has also severely impacted our export markets.”
Peak body AUSVEG endorsed the call out of concerns for the damage and injury being caused to the local horticultural industry.
“The Australian horticulture industry is suffering from massive injury to its industries with the flood of imported produce that is wrecking regional businesses, employers and families and we support the calls for emergency taxes on cheap imported food,” said AUSVEG public affairs manager William Churchill.
