The International Coffee Organisation has received an official letter, seen by Bartalks of the withdrawal of Uganda from the organisation.
The letter states:
The Executive Director of the International Coffee Organization (ICO), as the Chief Administrative Officer of the Depositary for the International Coffee Agreement (ICA) 2007, would like to inform Members and other interested parties that Uganda notified the Organization on 10 September 2021 of its intention not to join the extension of the International Coffee Agreement 2007. In accordance with paragraph 3 of Article 48 of the ICA 2007, the withdrawal of Uganda became effective on 2 February 2022, being the date of the extension of the ICA
The motivation for this has been left to speculation, although we expect to hear a statement in due course. When Guatemala left the ICO in 2020, they were vocal about what they saw as a lack of progress by the ICO in helping improve farmers livelihoods.
We wonder if the recent article about the perceived unfair treatment of Uganda by the EU over tariffs comes from the same pool of sentiment.
We can predict the ICO’s public reaction will be along the lines of how disappointed they are, but I hope behind the scenes, there will be a motivation to find out how to bridge grievances and avoid a fragmentation of the representation of coffee producing countries.