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COA voices its support for flower industry

As commodity prices rise, sales of “luxury items” such as flowers are falling, the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) recently reported.

Though Taiwan was once known as the “flower kingdom,” flower prices have dropped to a 10-year low, with half of the flowers that make it to market each day going unsold and being destroyed, the paper said.

“Taiwanese spend an average of a little over NT$100 on flowers each year compared with people in Japan, Europe and the US, who spend between NT$700 and NT$1,200 per capita annually. Taiwan has a lot of room for expansion in its domestic flower market,” Council of Agriculture (COA) Minister Chen Wu-hsiung (陳武雄) said at a flower promotion event on Saturday in the plaza of Taipei City Hall.

At the event, Chen reiterated the government’s determination to increase its support for the flower industry, with the specific aim of promoting domestic flower sales.

The council will also help flower farmers to market their products abroad, he said.

“The flower industry is the most beautiful industry in the country; flowers are good for home decoration, and can boost work efficiency in the office,” Chen said.

As such, he called on the public to demonstrate their appreciation for flowers at the dining table and in the garden, and bring flowers into their daily lives.

The Liberty Times reported yesterday that half of the flowers at the Taipei Pot Plant Auction — approximately 600,000 flowers — are destroyed each day because they are not bought.

The price for bunches of flowers dropped from a yearly average of NT$49.4 to NT$43 for this year, a 14.8 percent drop, the paper said.

The chrysanthemum, in particular, fell to a historic low of NT$15 per dozen, it said.

In response to the price drops, the Agriculture and Food Agency Secretary-General Hsu Hang-ching (�?�) said that the nadir already passed last month, and that the flower industry is regaining strength.
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