Under pressure to find new markets after Chinese pineapple ban
TAIWAN WILL EXPORT LARGE SHIPMENT OF PINEAPPLES TO AUSTRALIA IN MAY
Taiwan’s Council of Agriculture (COA) has announced that it has reached an agreement to export 6,000 kilograms of pineapples to Australia in May. The announcement came after Deputy Agriculture Minister Chen Junne-jih and his Australian counterpart, David Hazlehurst, held a virtual meeting to discuss agricultural cooperation.
According to the COA, Taiwan sent a small trial shipment of decrowned pineapples to Australia in March 2020, after Canberra approved imports of the fruit. Now, the two sides finalized plans to ship 6,000 kg of Taiwanese pineapples by sea to Australia in May, as well as a smaller quantity by air, the COA said.
The agreement with Australia came one week after China decided to halt imports of Taiwanese pineapples, saying various types of mealy bugs had been found in several shipments last year.
Taiwan To Find New Markets
The separatist Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on Wednesday put pressure on the island’s authorities to consider a tough response to the Chinese mainland’s ban on importing pineapples from the island.
According to an article on http://globaltimes.cn¸ the TPP’s party caucus in Taiwan’s “Legislative Yuan” urged the island’s ruling authority to come up with a solution and warn the mainland against the use of trade as a political means. Over the past five years under the administration of President Tsai Ing-wen, the island’s pineapple exports to the Chinese mainland accounted for 90 percent of its total exports of the fruit.
Taiwan island joined the WTO in 2001 as a separate customs territory, and its trade disputes with the mainland that are not categorized as ECFA-related issues are referred to the WTO’s dispute settlement mechanism.
Presidential Reaction
Taiwan will not be beaten by China’s ban on pineapple imports and will rally round its farmers to turn crisis into opportunity with new markets and more sales at home, President Tsai Ing-wen said on Wednesday, offering a defiant rebuke to Beijing. Reuters.com reports that Tsai, who has launched a “pineapple challenge” on her social media pages to get Taiwanese to buy more of the fruit, has told reporters that their strategy was paying off. Source: http://focustaiwan.tw (Fresh Plaza news).