The Grena­da gov­ern­ment Wednes­day con­firmed that a fish­eries ban im­posed by the Unit­ed States has been lift­ed even as St. George’s ac­knowl­edged that there is still more work to be done.

The US Na­tion­al Ocean­ic and At­mos­pher­ic Ad­min­is­tra­tion (NOAA) im­posed the ban on fish and fish prod­ucts be­cause Grena­da failed to pro­vide a “com­pa­ra­bil­i­ty find­ing” un­der the Ma­rine Mam­mal Pro­tec­tion Act (MM­PA), which re­quires that for­eign fish­ing op­er­a­tions do not kill or se­ri­ous­ly in­jure ma­rine mam­mals more of­ten than US ves­sels.

Grena­di­an au­thor­i­ties said the ban was a se­vere blow, im­pact­ing over EC$50 mil­lion (One EC dol­lar=US$0.37 cents) in an­nu­al ex­ports, pri­mar­i­ly yel­lowfin tu­na, which rep­re­sents a key sec­tor for Grena­da’s econ­o­my and sup­ports thou­sands of jobs.