Premier William Lai (賴清德) yesterday ordered the Council of Agriculture to find out the reasons behind plummeting fruit prices and 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.
The issue was brought up in the form of an extempore motion that was discussed during yesterday’s weekly Cabinet-level meeting at the Executive Yuan in Taipei.
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, Executive Yuan spokesman Hsu Kuo-yung (徐國勇) said.
Photo: Wang Han-ping, Taipei Times
In addition to asking the council to set the targets, the premier also asked it to implement eight strategies to improve fruit markets, in particular for pineapples, bananas and pitayas, which have borne the brunt of the recent price drop, Hsu said.
The eight strategies 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 centers and refrigerated supply chain systems; tapping private resources to stabilize supply and demand; improving the competitiveness of fruit exports; and 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, citing as an example a collaboration between the Ministry of the Economic Affairs and CPC Corp, Taiwan that saw more than 100 CPC-operated gas stations sell pineapples from Chiayi County, Hsu said.
The premier asked that the ministry intervene in the matter of its own initiative, he added.
“Taiwanese fruit is cheap and 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,” Hsu quoted the premier as saying.
Lai asked the council to obtain accurate information regarding fruit prices to protect farmers’ interests, adding that such information could serve as a reference when addressing plummeting fruit prices, Hsu said.
The council should promptly clarify false information to prevent it from misleading the public and causing losses to farmers, Hsu quoted the premier as saying.
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