Premier William Lai yesterday ordered Taiwan’s Council of Agriculture to find out the reasons behind plummeting fruit prices. It should also set targets of 10 percent of Taiwan’s total fruit supply each for exports, processing and direct and promotional sale volumes, to drive up demand.
Lai instructed the council and other agencies to implement an “advance warning system” to balance supply and demand of fruit until the end of the year. In addition to asking the council to set the targets, the premier also asked it to implement several strategies to improve fruit markets, in particular those for pineapples, bananas and pitayas, which have borne the brunt of the recent price drop.
The strategies Lai promoted are:
registering cultivation
establishing a thorough supply and marketing information platform to provide farmers with supply and demand outlooks
providing farmers with guidance if they decide to change what produce they grow during fallow periods
adjusting tariff quotas on fruit imports
diversifying processed fruit products
establishing flagship regional distribution centres and refrigerated supply chain systems
tapping private resources to stabilize supply and demand
improving the competitiveness of fruit exports
inducing change in the market structure and distribution channels
In addition, Lai asked national agencies and state-run corporations to increase their fruit purchases during harvest seasons. As an example he cited the collaboration between the Ministry of the Economic Affairs and CPC Corp, that saw more than 100 CPC-operated gas stations successfully sell pineapples from Chiayi County.
“Taiwanese fruit is cheap and of high-quality, and should be shared with friends. I believe that distribution channels set up by state-run businesses would be of considerable help to farmers when marketing agricultural products,” taipeitimes.com quoted the premier as saying.
