Eastern Europe keeps banana producers on tenterhooks

Image: Expreso

For Ecuadorian banana producers losing the Russian, Eastern European and Chinesemarkerts, is losing the most important buyers the country has.

The crisis Russia is going through would be one of the main causes. “Russia will experience negative growth next year 2016 and could even fall into recession drowned by falling oil prices and international sanctions, two factors that have led to a sharp depreciation of the ruble,” says an analysis by the Association of Production, Commercialization and Export of Bananas of Ecuador (Acorbanec for its Spanish acronym), accessed by Daily Expreso.

Russia buys 22% of our bananas. 97% of its consumption is provided by Ecuadorian farms, leaving a small niche to the Philippines Colombia and Costa Rica.

Russian importers, due to the economic crisis in which the country is immersed, began to reduce the amounts contracted; then they began to lower purchase prices, taking from 3-4 weeks to pay Ecuadorian exporters.

Source: http://expreso.ec/expreso/plantillas/nota.aspx?idart=8595746&idcat=38229&tipo=2