Protectionist potato policy urged

WELLINGTON: Potatoes New Zealand is asking the Government to ban heavily discounted frozen potato fries from arriving in the country.

It said global potato prices had collapsed and there was a mountain of product sitting in European cool stores.

Potatoes New Zealand chief executive Chris Claridge believed heavily subsidised European producers were eyeing up world markets to dump surplus product.

He said the EU had 2.6 million tonnes of surplus fries.

The local industry, whose annual production was only 150,000 tonnes, was already having to absorb its own large losses from the lack of demand in the past two months.

It could not wait for the fries to arrive at the wharf and cause longterm harm that it might not recover from, Mr Claridge said.

‘‘We want the Government to immediately implement shortterm safeguard measures to protect our industry from dumping.

‘‘We are not asking for a handout, we are just asking for a level playing field.’’

He said the Europeans were subsidising their potato producers ¤50 ($NZ89) a tonne.

‘‘This is against international rules to dump subsidised product into someone else’s market and disrupt it.’’ — RNZ