Mango shipments to be weighed at airport

KARACHI: The weight of mangoes being exported from Pakistan to other countries will now be checked at the cargo terminals of Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad airports and action will be taken against exporters not complying with the standard weight rule.

All Pakistan Fruit and Vegetable Exporters, Importers and Merchants Association along with the customs department have started a campaign to stop the export of mangoes having less than the standard weight.

Accordingly, the customs authorities checked the shipments of 11 companies at the Karachi airport on Tuesday and offloaded the shipment of Mabz enterprises whose package weight was 15 per cent lesser than  the standard weight.

Chairman of the association, Waheed Ahmed told The Express Tribune that the trade ministry has set a standard weight at two kilogrammes (kg) for exporting mangoes and a 5 per cent deviation from this weight is allowed.

The London market is giving 2.60 pounds for 2kg Pakistani mangoes.

He said that misdeclaration in the weight and exporting lighter weighing mangoes will hurt Pakistan’s goodwill with foreign countries, which may stop importing mangoes from Pakistan in the future.

Earlier, Ahmed had said that the target of exporting 150,000 tons would be difficult to achieve as the export quality production of the king of fruits was not enough to reach the figure and the rains, which had lashed Sindh recently, had further affected the output.

Published in the Express Tribune, June 10^th, 2010.