In defense of the national interest

Sugarcane, as a crop and as an industrialized product, has been one of the main sources of work and income in the country for decades.

The validity of preferential quotas in the North American market has been a factor of stability in the exports of this product, which allows the sustainability of this agribusiness.

This year, for example, the country supplied 183 thousand tons to that market and received revenues of 130 million dollars.

If no factors arise that alter this flow pattern, sugar exports will continue to increase.

However, in the United States House of Representatives there has been an alignment of a group of its members to sanction the country with a cut in that quota and other measures.

They are based on alleged abuses of treatment and forced labor as well as the precarious living conditions of sugarcane workers, most of whom are of Haitian origin.

Faced with such a negative expectation, a group of senators, to which the deputies of eleven provinces whose economies depend on this crop will probably be added, has come out in defense of the national interest.

They intend to go directly to knock on doors in the United States, to demonstrate that the reasons argued by their colleagues in the House of Representatives are inadmissible.

Rarely has there been an unanimity of purpose for a case of this nature.

The government and the municipalities of these sugar areas must also join in this defense of the national interest until the objective of avoiding a negative impact on our sugar exports to the North American market is achieved.