Government to continue tariff exemption for bananas, pineapples and other key products in first six months of 2025
The Korean government has announced it will continue to waive tariffs on a wide range of imported fruits in the first six months of 2025 as it battles food price inflation.
Imports of bananas, pineapples, mangoes, grapefruit and avocados have enjoyed tariff exemption since January 2024, with durian and mangosteen added to the list in April.
On Thursday (2 January), the government confirmed all these items will continue to remain tariff-free in the first six months of 2025 albeit subject to quotas.
Imports of bananas, pineapples, mangoes, grapefruit and avocados typically incur a duty of 30 per cent.
All these items will be tariff-free up to certain volume thresholds, which are set at similar levels to the total import volume for each product in the first six months of 2024.
Banana imports are tariff-free up to a quota of 200,000 tonnes. Korea’s total banana imports in the first half of 2024 topped 227,000 tonnes, up from 170,255 tonnes in the corresponding period of 2023.
Pineapple imports are tariff-free up to 46,000 tonnes, roughly equivalent to the total import volume in the first half of 2024.
The tariff-free quotas for other items include mangoes (25,000 tonnes), grapefruit (6,000 tonnes), avocados (2,000 tonnes), durian (1,700 tonnes) and mangosteen (1,400 tonnes). Durian is usually subject to a tariff of 45 per cent.
Import duties on mandarins will be slashed from 50 per cent to 20 per cent under a quota of 2,800 tonnes. However, the import tariff on US mandarins is already lower than this – at 9.6 per cent – under the Korea-US Free Trade Agreement (KORUS).
The duty on orange imports will also be reduced from 50 per cent to 20 per cent on a quota of 10,000 tonnes, which is restricted to the months of January and February. The Korean government also provides KORUS tariff-free quotas for US orange imports each year, which amount to 3,565 tonnes in 2025.
