According to the Panamanian Food Safety Authority (Aupsa), from July 2014 to date, Panama has imported 372,867 quintals of onions, 367,794 quintals of paddy, and 49,012 quintals of potatoes.
According to producers, these imports are excessive and are one of the causes of the strike carried out last Monday for undersupplied markets to demand the Government suspends such purchases and that the amendments to the law created by the Aupsa, that regulate this activity, be enacted.
The Minister's first reaction to the strike was to tell producers that if there were a shortage in supply, the Government would proceed to import food.
However, a few days later, after the producers' pressure managed to curb imports through the Institute of Agricultural Marketing (IMA), Arango changed his stance.
"Imports are doing tremendous damage and all the laws are made to permit this," he said.
"The rules we have created will let us know when and how Panama imports onions, because there were requests to import from people who did not even have warehouses," he said.
He also said there were importers who imported the onions and took them to highlands and sold them as seeds, which was very dangerous.
Dissatisfaction
After the agreements reached on Tuesday, that ended the producers strike, Augusto Jimenez, president of the Association of Producers of the Highlands, said they were not satisfied because the main measure was penalizing the changes made to the Aupsa Act.
"The Mida didn't technically support if bill #188 collides with the international treaties so we will meet with the Legal Department of the Presidency of the Republic in the coming days to review the technical part of the two articles that, according to businessmen and authorities, undermine the FTA," he said.
In face of the protest and insistence of producers the Government decided to implement a state of emergency in order to suspend onion imports for the next two months so produces can sell about 60 million pounds that the IMA hasn't bought from them.
Given this, minister Jorge Arango said the Agricultural Marketing Institute (IMA) had become an entity of the Mida and that it would stop selling imported products because its function was to market the national product and not to buy from abroad.
Other major functions of the IMA are to ensure the internal and external marketing of domestic production at good prices while protecting the interests of producers and consumers.
The measure agreed upon the meeting will address market conditions, for which the Mida will make an inventory of the amount of onion in the country with the intention of eliminating any situation that affects marketing conditions.
Once the inventory is defined, the Mida will decide when the country could start imports again, but through the National Commodity Exchange SA (Baisa), for which they must establish the amount that is required to meet domestic demand.
Producers will continue negotiating so that the amendments to the Aupsa law are sanctioned.
The amendments to this legislation seek to prevent imports of products at the time that Panamanian farmers are selling their crops or products.
The price of horticultural products will decline today due to an oversupply
The stoppage of shipments of vegetables from the province of Chiriqui, due to the producers' protests, caused an overall shortage in the Market of the capital in just two days, which caused prices to rocket.
In this period, sellers tripled the price of foods like onions, lettuce, cabbage, carrot and celery, among others.
However, according to Yoris Morales, president of the Association of Producers and Traders from the Central Market, there should be a drop in vegetable prices today, even below their reference cost, as there will be an oversupply of products.
About 46 locals will receive the goods of nearly 15 trucks that left the Chiriqui Highlands yesterday at noon. 70% of the production from the Highlands and Cerro Punta is marketed in the Central Market.
