LAHORE, April 14: Pakistan has set a new record of kinno export this season by sending out over 150,000 tons so far, and the process still continues.
According to latest export figures by the Pakistan Horticulture Development & Export Board (PHDEB), the kinno exports had already broken the previous year’s record of 149,000 tons.
Shamoon Sadiq, an official at PHDEB, told Dawn that it had been done without Indonesia, which has been our traditional market and alone uses to consume some 40 per cent of Pakistan citrus exports. The Indonesian authorities had raised duty on Pakistani citrus by 20 per cent and drove it out of the local market. Had the Indonesian market still available, the exports could have easily touched 250,000 tons.
Pakistan, he said, still has two more weeks of international monopoly in citrus and should be able to increase the figure substantially.
The exporters, however, contested the official figures and claimed that citrus export in fact had crossed 200,000 tons mark. Export to Central Asian States and other neighbouring countries skip normal customs procedures and are not reflected in official figures.
“If those exports are also taken into account the export figure has already crossed the government’s target of 200,000 for the year. The PHDEB figures based on customs data, which are not comprehensive,” says an exporter.
According to official figures, Russia had been the biggest buyer of Pakistan citrus this season by importing over 31,000 tons till April 1. It was followed by the UAE with around 30,000 tons and the Philippines with 16,795 tons. Iran, which resumes kinno imports from Pakistan after 25 years, bought 18,637 tons and more deals were in process. Indonesia had imported only 6,495 tons and Saudi Arabia 11,792 tons.
The momentum for kinno export has now been set, claimed Shamoon Sadiq. “China has also recently cleared seven Pakistani companies for citrus export and so has been done by the Philippines. The government is also negotiating Early Harvest Programme with the Indonesian authorities and hopefully good news may be heard soon,” he added.
Citrus remains key in talks with Indonesia and from next year the Iranian market would expand further. All these trends show that citrus exports are well set on their way to grow, he said. If everything goes well, the country would be able to touch a figure of 250,000 tons next year, he added.
He further said that the board was now concentrating on mango, which has more issues to tackle if exports of fruit are to grow. “The main problem is that of shelf life, which is hardly of two weeks and exporters are unable to send mango by sea and air journey becomes too costly and render the fruit uncompetitive.”
The board was now fully concentrating on increasing shelf life of mango. “Experiments are being conducted in post-harvest handling and other possible areas. If scientists are able to increase the shelf life of mango by another week, it would be a big economic relief to exporters. Some of these experiments have succeeded and hopefully things would start improving in a while,” he concluded.
