Fruit exporters failed to grasp the lucrative opportunity for export of mangoes to China and Iran during this season, for which the government signed memorandum of understanding (MoUs), due to the bad planning of the Pakistan Horticultural Export Development Board (PHEDB), leading exporters alleged.
Fruit Exporter Saadat Riaz told Business Recorder on Tuesday that the MoUs were signed for export of mangoes to these countries in May, and exporters hoped to ship substantial quantities of mangoes to the virgin and huge markets in Iran and China, but the delay in finalising arrangements for export by the PHEDB the country lost substantial export earnings.
He said the Board had organised visit of an exporters' delegation to Iran for this week which is quite late, and if the exporters are able to clinch some export deals they would not be able to make shipments due to the shortage of mangoes at the end of the season.
Saadat also said the export of fruits had further suffered due to delay in formulating the quality standards due to a row between the Ministry of Food, Agriculture, and Livestock (Minfal) and the PHDEP as to who is the competent authority to do the job.
The phyto-sanitary certificate, at present, issued by Minfal certifying quality of fruits is no longer accepted in European markets where the buyers are now demanding for a new set of quality standards to be framed by some reputed international consultants.
He said that for lack of any quality standards the French customs recently destroyed four mango shipments causing loss of thousands of dollars in export earnings.
It is also alleged the export of mangoes had been adversely affected this year for lack of uniformity in weight of mango packs which weigh differently ranging from one kg to one and a half kgs, two-kg and more. The variation in weights of mango packs resulted in mis-declaration of weight as some time mango boxes declared to contain two-kg carried only one-kg of fruits. This created a bad image for the country, which also affected the genuine exporters.
Comments
Comments are closed.