Programming Guidelines BAM

1. BACKGROUND : RATIONALE FOR THE BAM
The Geneva Agreement on Trade in Bananas (GATB) and the BAM
Banana is the fourth largest crop at global level (after rice, wheat, maize), its total annual production amounts to 117 millions tonnes, half of which is constituted by the banana "dessert", by large the most exported banana (96%) . From 15% to 20% of this global production is exported. Five multinational companies are dominating the banana trade (Dole, USA 21%, Chiquita USA 22%, Del Monte, based in the USA 15%, FYFFES Ireland 7%) .
Since 1993 and the Common Market Organisation for banana, a system of quotas and duties managed by the European Commission had been protecting the banana sectors from the traditional banana exporting countries from the African Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group.
There were several commercial disputes on this matter with other banana exporting countries or countries having special interests in the banana trade in the 1990s and early 2000s. Various changes were then made to the quota system (in 1998 and in 2001), which was finally replaced by a tariff-only system starting from 1 January 2006. These disputes were brought in front of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and to give a final point to the so-called "banana war", the Commission negotiated an agreement on Geneva in 2009.

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