Chief Executive Officer Harvest Tradings (HT) Ahmad Jawad has said that due to a capacity constraint of airlines for handling mango export, the country's exports may not exceed 150,000 tons. Talking to INP here on Wednesday, Ahmed Jawad said the most disgusting point was that this year Pakistan was likely to get a bumper crop of mango of over 1.5 million tons.
"It is required that the country should be exporting double the target quantity at least 25 percent of the total production, but the prevailing infrastructure is highly insufficient," he added. He said that one of the key issues was that various countries had specified their own laws but mostly exporters were not fully aware of those requirements.
Jawad said the performance of PHDEC remained highly critical because it had failed in facilitating setting up of required infrastructure. Besides limited availability of space on airlines, the key impediment is freight cost because soon after commencement of mango export, airlines start jacking up freight charges.
Harvest CEO further briefed the big problem in mango export was that there were not adequate facilities to store mango shipment at Karachi and Lahore airports. Any delay in flight affects the quality of shipment and if delayed beyond 12 hours the entire shipment can go stale. Therefore, exporters avoid exporting fully ripe mangos, which usually fetch lower price.