In light of a slow down in sendings from the Philippines, Ecuador hopes to export more bananas to China.
The slow down in trade between China and the Philippines was highlighted during a recent banana forum in Ecuador, where new markets were a topic of conversation, El Comercio has reported.
Other potential markets that came up for discussion were Turkey, South Korea and Japan.
Fabricio Espinoza of the Probana Group said the main obstacle to increasing trade with these countries were high trade tariffs.
“We must create marketing agreements that benefit exports. Turkey has one of the highest tariffs,” he said. According to the report, the import tariff for Turkey is 100 per cent, while China’s is just 10 per cent.
Evaristo Baque, chairman of the House of Agriculture of Zone II, said Ecuador needed to be proactive in developing the Chinese market. 'We sell it because exporters come here, but we never go out to offer it,” he said.
Adrian Rodriguez from the Agricultural Unit of the Economic Commission for Latin America said the region anticipated a five per cent increase in banana production in coming years and part of this increase could be sent to China.
In March, Chinese authorities barred the entry of Philippine bananas claiming they found scale insects in the fruit and ordered inspections of 100 per cent of incoming banana shipments from Mindanao.
