Dairy chain asks not to sign EAF with New Zealand | National

The first alarm bells were given by regional producers, so the guilds came up ; and now, the entire dairy chain believes that if the national government signs the FTA with New Zealand and Australia, it will be the last puncture for the country's dairy sector.

In a letter sent to the President of the Republic, Juan Manuel Santos, Analac, Asoleche, Fedecoleche and Fedegan reiterated the clamor of their representatives to exclude the dairy sector from the Pacific Alliance negotiations with New Caledonia. Zealand, Australia, Singapore and Canada, candidate states.

Various productive links in the country's dairy sector estimate that the signing of an agreement with the world's most powerful country in terms of milk production is to condemn 450,000 Colombian families to ruin.

The sample of this power is taken with the following figure: New Zealand, during the 2016/17 season, processed 20,700 million liters of milk, or 6.5 times the official milk collection in Colombia (3,220 million liters).

"Exports of milk powder, butter, cheese and other dairy products amounted to about US $ 10,500 million in 2017, one-third of Colombia's total exports in that year ", he said in the letter. The average per cow in this country is 15 liters, a figure that triples the average in Colombia. Because of low costs, New Zealand is able to withstand logistical costs and therefore place its dairy products in any market in the world.

Guilds argue that it is an opening without compensation and the destruction of an area. % of agricultural GDP and generates 700 thousand jobs in more than 400 thousand properties nationwide.

Trade unions believe that the country already has two FTAs ​​(US and EU) that will lead the sector to be exposed to direct competition from dairy products without tariffs. The above means bankruptcy.