Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Al­fred Pros­pere Mon­day said St. Lu­cia is now ex­port­ing ba­nanas to Trinidad and To­ba­go af­ter trade with the Unit­ed King­dom was sus­pend­ed ear­li­er this month.

Pros­pere, speak­ing to re­porters ahead of the week­ly Cab­i­net meet­ing, dis­missed sug­ges­tions that the Phillip Pierre ad­min­is­tra­tion had been re­spon­si­ble for killing of the in­dus­try.

“But they nev­er said the im­por­tant part of my state­ment, which was as soon as this de­ci­sion was tak­en, the very same quan­ti­ty of ba­nanas was di­vert­ed to Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Pros­pere said, adding that the UK trade sus­pen­sion did not neg­a­tive­ly im­pact lo­cal farm­ers.

“We are still ex­port­ing those 1000 box­es to Trinidad,” Pros­pere said, adding that the lo­cal au­thor­i­ties are work­ing with a sup­pli­er in Trinidad & To­ba­go to ship 3,000 ad­di­tion­al box­es of lo­cal ba­nanas to the twin-Is­land Re­pub­lic.

“The point I am mak­ing is that we are not in a sit­u­a­tion where the thou­sand box­es that were go­ing to the UK are at a halt be­cause our farm­ers would be in a po­si­tion where their fruits would be hang­ing. Their fruits are still be­ing har­vest­ed and they are be­ing ex­port­ed,

“So I want to make it clear to the pub­lic that the sit­u­a­tion that ex­ist­ed where we had to sus­pend ex­ports to the UK, those fruits are now be­ing ex­port­ed to Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he added.

Pros­pere an­nounc­ing the UK ba­nana trade sus­pen­sion, said that when the Pierre ad­min­is­tra­tion came to of­fice in Ju­ly last year it found a ba­nana in­dus­try that had col­lapsed.

“Ba­nana trade with the UK was halt­ed for two years. The crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture re­quired to ef­fi­cient­ly op­er­ate the in­dus­try was dis­man­tled. The main ba­nana ex­port­ing com­pa­ny WIB­DE­CO/Win­fresh ltd went in­to ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Pros­pere said that key as­sets such as the ripen­ing fa­cil­i­ty at Stanstead in the UK and Win­fresh’s stake in the Geest ship­ping line were sold off to third par­ties to meet debt pay­ments. He said this meant that the main com­po­nents of the ba­nana ex­port­ing com­pa­ny such as ship­ping, mar­ket­ing, and lo­gis­tics were lost.

“The lo­cal pro­duc­er base/farmer’s or­ga­ni­za­tion, the NFTO was fac­ing fi­nan­cial loss­es and tech­ni­cal chal­lenges. They had to im­me­di­ate­ly as­sume re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the com­mer­cial arm of the trade al­though they did not have the re­sources and ex­per­tise to ad­e­quate­ly per­form that role. The sit­u­a­tion at the time seems rather bleak.”

Pros­pere said the gov­ern­ment in recog­ni­tion of the so­cio-eco­nom­ic con­se­quences and the crit­i­cal role of the ba­nana trade in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties, found it nec­es­sary to in­ter­vene for the sake of main­tain­ing so­cial peace and eco­nom­ic mo­bil­i­ty in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties.

“In the na­tion­al in­ter­est, we saw it pru­dent to in­ject the nec­es­sary fi­nan­cial and tech­ni­cal sup­port re­quired to recom­mence trade with the UK su­per­mar­kets. A loan fa­cil­i­ty was es­tab­lished to in­ject EC$3.8 mil­lion (One EC dol­lar=US$0.37 cents) in­to the NFTO.

“To fur­ther em­pha­size the com­mit­ment of the gov­ern­ment to our farm­ers and the peo­ple of St Lu­cia, a gov­ern­ment lead del­e­ga­tion trav­elled to the UK to meet with the su­per­mar­ket rep­re­sen­ta­tives to as­cer­tain how best to pro­ceed with the trade and fi­nal­ize con­trac­tu­al re­la­tions with our farm­ers. As the trade evolved, I demon­strat­ed the in­ter­est of the gov­ern­ment of St Lu­cia in the ba­nana trade by keep­ing in di­rect con­tact with our farm­ers, the NFTO, and our UK su­per­mar­ket part­ners.”

He said in May this year, a tech­ni­cal del­e­ga­tion from the UK, vis­it­ed St Lu­cia to de­ter­mine the state of readi­ness pri­or to the com­mence­ment of trade. Pros­pere said the tech­ni­cal field vis­it was deemed sat­is­fac­to­ry and trade with the UK com­menced im­me­di­ate­ly on May 15.

He said dur­ing the pe­ri­od of trade, the gov­ern­ment con­tin­ued to pro­vide sup­port to the ba­nana farm­ers by sub­si­diz­ing in­puts such as oils and fer­til­iz­er to farm­ers.

“In ad­di­tion, we have ac­tive­ly pur­sued oth­er re­gion­al mar­kets with a view of pro­vid­ing fur­ther op­por­tu­ni­ties for our farm­ers. We were suc­cess­ful for a cer­tain pe­ri­od, whilst we tried to re­build the ba­nana in­dus­try. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the long-term im­pact of COVID-19 on the sup­ply chain and the on­go­ing war in Ukraine have pre­sent­ed some ma­jor chal­lenges that threat­en the eco­nom­ic vi­a­bil­i­ty of the trade at this time.”

He said the high ship­ping and fu­el cost as­so­ci­at­ed with a con­tain­er of ba­nanas is stat­ed at US$8,200 per con­tain­er “and ris­ing” and al­though 50 per cent of the ship­ping cost was sub­si­dized by the su­per­mar­ket chain, it was dif­fi­cult to sus­tain once fu­el prices keep ris­ing.

“The costs of key in­puts such as fer­til­iz­er, oil, bags, and oth­er in­puts are ris­ing dai­ly. The ex­tend­ed jour­ney time to reach the UK is prov­ing un­com­pet­i­tive as com­pared to oth­er sup­pli­ers.”

Pros­pere said that the Geest ship­ping line has a mo­nop­oly over the route and they have shown no in­ter­est to mod­ern­ize the con­tain­er units that trans­port our ba­nanas”.

He ar­gued that had the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment “not sold off our stake in the ship­ping busi­ness, we might be able to sub­si­dize our ship­ping cost and mod­ern­ize the con­tain­ers to our re­quire­ments and se­lect a short­er trav­el route that would give our ba­nanas a com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tage as was pre­vi­ous­ly done when we once owned shares in the Geest line.

“To­day we are now be­ing haunt­ed by this crit­i­cal de­ci­sion to sell our stake in the ship­ping busi­ness.

The on­go­ing chal­lenges re­quired a re­view of the trade to eval­u­ate the busi­ness case and as­cer­tain whether the par­ties are mak­ing the monies that they had an­tic­i­pat­ed pri­or to the com­mence­ment of the trade.”

Pros­pere said that the con­tract­ing par­ties, NFTO, and the UK su­per­mar­ket chain have in­formed the gov­ern­ment that they have mu­tu­al­ly de­cid­ed to sus­pend the trade as they mon­i­tor the cur­rent sit­u­a­tions im­pact­ing the trade both in the Caribbean and the UK.

“The cost-of-liv­ing cri­sis and ris­ing en­er­gy costs over the next few months have cre­at­ed ma­jor un­cer­tain­ties for every­one. As soon as both par­ties are sat­is­fied that it is prof­itable to pro­ceed then the trade will be ac­ti­vat­ed.

“For­tu­nate­ly for our farm­ers, the ef­forts that we have em­ployed in pur­su­ing the re­gion­al mar­kets are show­ing signs of progress and growth. The con­sign­ment of ba­nanas orig­i­nal­ly as­signed to the UK mar­ket will now be di­vert­ed to the re­gion­al mar­ket and the week­ly trade will be main­tained.”

Pros­pere said that the NFTO along with gov­ern­ment sup­port are cur­rent­ly fol­low­ing up on ad­di­tion­al in­quiries with­in the re­gion and short­ly they will be able to in­crease our re­gion­al mar­ket pres­ence and vol­umes.

“We con­tin­ue to en­cour­age our farm­ers to main­tain the high­est qual­i­ty that is as­so­ci­at­ed with our ba­nanas as we look for­ward to ex­pand­ing the re­gion­al trade.”

Pros­pere told re­porters that he had spo­ken with a buy­er in St. Thomas who is in­ter­est­ed in ba­nanas and plan­tains, av­o­ca­does, cit­rus, and oth­er crops.

“We are do­ing well so far,” Pros­pere told re­porters.

CAS­TRIES, St. Lu­cia, Nov 14, CMC