BOGOTA: Colombian authorities fined sugar producers a combined total of more than 324 billion pesos ($111.5 million) for conspiring to block imports of the product from Bolivia, Guatemala, El Salvador and Costa Rica.
The more than two-dozen entities affected by the fines include the sugar producers’ association, known as Asocaña; and C.I. de Azucares y Mieles S.A., an import and distribution company, Industry and Commerce Superintendent Pablo Felipe Robledo told reporters.
The fine was levied for “anti-competitive agreements and cartel-formation aimed at obstructing sugar imports to Colombia, primarily from Bolivia, Guatemala, El Salvador and Costa Rica, in a concerted, coordinated and sustained manner,” Robledo said Wednesday.
Fourteen company executives also were fined for authorizing and facilitating the anti-competitive conduct.
The Superintendence of Industry and Commerce, or SIC, a regulatory agency that launched its investigation in 2010 in response to complaints from several manufacturers that use sugar as an input in production, said the fines it imposed on the sugar mills did not exceed 7 percent of their annual operating revenues or 7 percent of their total assets.
But the National Business Association of Colombia, or Andi, said in a statement Thursday that the fines could affect the sector’s viability.
They “could amount to more than 100 percent of some companies’ profits, which would mean a significant blow to the economy of the (western province of) Valle del Cauca,” one of Colombia’s biggest sugarcane-growing regions, the association said.
It also lamented that “currently it is practically impossible to appeal these types of decisions.”
The SIC said that in imposing the fines that it took into account the fact that some of the sugar mills and executives were found responsible in 2010 for forming a cartel to drive down the price paid to sugar growers.
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