Cucumber exporters from Honduras have been displaced by Mexican producers who are selling their cucumbers at half-price in major US cities. Honduran exporters claim this is a dumping practice, among other irregularities.
So far this year, Honduras has lost export opportunities totalling "more than 700 containers with a thousand boxes," said Enrique Miselem, a member of the Federation of Agricultural Exporters of Non-Traditional Products of the Comayagua Valley.
He said that Mexico exported an average of one thousand containers per week from the valley of Sinaloa to the United States, and that the freight from Nogales to the East Coast cost them $4 to $8 per box. "That's dumping," he said.
Sinaloa is the main cucumber production region and the average cost of transporting a box to the US border is about 50 cents US.
The source said that shipping the cucumbers from the border to major distribution centers in the states of Florida and New York cost around US $14, but exporters of Sinaloa were only realising $7 per box.
"Mexico is competing unfairly," he said, adding that they were already working together to go to the World Trade Organization (WTO) to show that there are anti-competitive practices.
Faced with the fall of the US market, the Federation is looking for opportunities in other markets, but Miselem said that prices continued to be depressed because of an over-production of cucumbers.
Agricultural exporters complain because high energy costs, wages, and tax burdens, (such as the 1.5 percent advance payment of income tax), were reducing their competitiveness at a regional level.
Miselem said that the lack of competitiveness and prices below production costs were also affecting other exporters of non-traditional products, such as cantaloupe or watermelon.
According to the National Agricultural Health Service (SENASA), exports of non-traditional products accounted for nearly 600 million dollars last year.
