Unión de Países Exportadores de Banano
The Unión de Países Exportadores de Banano UPEB for short was a Central and South American cartel of banana-exporting states in the form of an international organization .
In 1974 the governments of Colombia , Costa Rica , Ecuador , Guatemala , Honduras , Nicaragua and Panama , inspired by OPEC, formed a cartel of banana producers for the North American banana market.
With the exception of the Philippines , all of the United States' major banana supplier countries were in this cartel. The ACP countries have the Lomé Convention privileged access to the European banana market .
Climatic exclusivity suggest organizing in a cartel as a further development of the oligopoly held by multinational companies .
Under the oligopoly market conditions, the end consumer price for bananas stagnates. On the banana market, the supply chain is organized in such a way that, for example, one USD with which bananas are bought in the USA is paid for in the country of production of around 0.17 USD. Long-term costs such as environmental damage and latent poisoning are socialized in the country of production.
In 1974 United Brands Company formerly United Fruit Company , Standard Fruit and Del Monte Corporation shared the banana market.
The UPEB proposed to impose a one USD export tax on the crate (forty pound banana crate ). The oligopolies threatened to stop trading. The unregulated world market was saturated with bananas and the government of Ecuador, a leading banana exporter, refused to impose the proposed tax.
José Figueres Ferrer had threatened to nationalize Standard Fruit in Costa Rica if it did not pay the tax. Standard Fruit threatened his successor Daniel Oduber Quirós that if further threats were made, Standard Fruit would withdraw from Costa Rica. Costa Rica's tax claims were $ 0.25 per crate. In 1974 a law was passed in the Parliament of Honduras that increased the export tax from USD 0.25 to USD 0.50 per crate. In 1974, more than 22% of United Brands Company's bananas came from Honduras .
Bananagate
Elihu Menashe Black jumped from the 44th floor of the MetLife Building on February 3, 1975 .
When the United States Securities and Exchange Commission to overthrow examined, they revealed that he pretended related expenses in the amount of 1.25 million USD at Oswaldo López Arellano from Reptilienfonds not in the balance of Chiquita Brands International had reported. A process which was referred to in the press as the Bananagate , based on the Watergate affair . The money had been transferred to a Swiss bank account. The account was opened by the Honduran Minister of Economic Affairs, José Abraham Bennaton Ramos. In return, the increase in export tax for United Brands Company resolved by parliament was not implemented. The reduced tax to the state of Honduras saved United Brands Company approximately $ 7.5 million. Due to Bananagate, the UPEB had become implausible and was no longer used as a body.
Further research showed that the United Brands Company had paid an additional $ 0.75 million in cash to European officials in the early 1970s to avert restrictions on United Brands Company's banana exports .
The United Brands Company tried unsuccessfully to convince the United States Securities and Exchange Commission that showing the useful expenses on the balance sheet would have been detrimental to business. UFCO's legal advisor, Covington & Burling, told the United States Department of State the potential negative effects of disclosure of the beneficial expenditures on diplomatic relations between the US and Honduras governments . The State Department saw no national interest in this case .
aftermath
On May 1, 1975, the Parliament of Costa Rica passed a law to increase the banana export tax from USD 0.25 to one USD per crate. The regulation specifies the use of the tax: USD 0.45 is for the state budget and USD 0.55 is subsidized for independent banana producers.
Costa Rican Banana Co., the Costa Rican subsidiary of United Brands , filed a lawsuit against the government of Costa Rica in April 1975, with an amount in dispute of USD 3 million, because the government of Costa Rica had given the government a promise to sell it until the expiry of an export tax In 1988 contract not to be taxed, violated.
The establishment of the UPEB occasionally gave the impetus to levy banana export taxes.
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ Expensive and embarrassing . In: Der Spiegel . No. 20 , 1975 ( online - May 12, 1975 ).
- ↑ Thomas P. Anderson: Politics in Central America: Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Greenwood Publishing Group, 1988, p. 136 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
- ^ Time , Apr. 21, 1975, Energy, Bananas and Israeli Cash
- ↑ Crooked business . In: Der Spiegel . No. 28 1975 ( online - July 7, 1975 ).
- ↑ en: Covington & Burling