Pakistan's kinnow exporters oppose minimum purchase price

Argue Rs1,000-per-40kg price will badly hurt citrus exports

KARACHI: Kinnow exporters have expressed apprehension over the announcement of minimum purchase price of Rs1,000 per 40 kilogramme for the citrus and have voiced fear the decision may badly hurt exports in the current fiscal year.

All Pakistan Fruit and Vegetable Exporters, Importers and Merchants Association (PFVA) Patron-in-Chief Waheed Ahmed said the Sargodha deputy commissioner had fixed the minimum price in a meeting held with the fruit growers and exporters on Monday.

“The association has serious reservations about this meeting conducted by an office beyond its legal jurisdiction and hence the decision taken to fix the kinnow price also stands null and void,” PFVA Secretary General Mohammad Ilyas Khan said in a letter sent to Adviser to Prime Minister on Commerce Abdul Razak Dawood on Wednesday.

“The association being a main stakeholder was not involved in this consultative meeting,” he said in the letter, which was also sent to the Federal Ministry of National Food Security and Research.

Sargodha is the main centre for citrus orchards as the city produces over 80% of the total production of 3.4 million tons.

Earlier in August, the growers had rejected the exporters’ offer of Rs600 per 40 kg for the current season compared to Rs850 per 40kg paid last year, FPCCI Standing Committee on Horticulture Exports’ former chairman Ahmad Jawad said the other day.

“This has happened for the first time that any authority has fixed the price of a fruit. Secondly, the fruit price fixation has nothing to do with the commissioner’s office,” the PFVA patron-in-chief told The Express Tribune.

“Price fixing is not a provincial or town-level subject. It is a federal subject. Secondly, the minimum purchase price is set for major or staple crops while kinnow is neither a major, nor a staple crop.”

Fruit price is always paid according to its quality and grade. “We (exporters) paid in the range of Rs700-1,200 per 40 kg as per quality and grade of the fruit last year,” he said.

The fixed price would compel the exporters to pay a minimum Rs1,000 per 40 kg for even a low-grade kinnow, which they purchased at Rs700 per 40 kg last year.

He said the decision would put kinnow exports at risk as competition was already stiff in the export market. “We not only lag behind in per acre yield, but world markets now also demand clean skin and seedless kinnow, which we unfortunately do not produce.”

Pakistan earned $210 million through the export of 350,000 tons of kinnow and other citrus fruits in the previous fiscal year.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 17^th, 2019.

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