Taiwanese mangoes have strong potential for sales growth in the Japanese market because of their quality, Tainan County Commissioner Su Huan-chih (蘇煥智) said yesterday.
Su, who last week returned from a trip to Japan to promote domestic mangoes, said yesterday that his recent investigation into Japanese markets suggests that Taiwanese mangoes have great potential there.
According to Su, promotional exhibitions held in Tokyo and Osaka early this month attracted hundreds of dealers, who responded positively to the Irwin variety of Taiwanese mango.
PHOTO: SHAO HSIN-JIE, TAIPEI TIMES
Su said that recently completed steam sterilization facilities in Tainan County will help ensure the quality of domestic fruit.
"Our mango consignments exported to Japan will all be accompanied by a completed sanitary certificate. In addition to the quality [control], we also have to ensure the quantity and that the packaging is well-designed," Su said.
Su said he found that the price of a mango from Mexico or Taiwan sold in ordinary supermarkets was only about NT$172, while that of a Japanese mango sold in a top-end department store fetched NT$1,056.
Given that, Taiwan should try to promote its mangoes into Japan's high-spending market, Su said.
Mangoes were introduced to Taiwan by the Dutch. In 1954, Taiwanese farmers began to grow foreign varieties that were introduced from the US by the government. Among them, the Irwin variety has become the most popular.
Last year, Tainan County exported 501 tonnes of Irwin mangoes to Japan, valued at US$2 million. This year, the county government hopes to triple the amount it exports to Japan.
Su said that focusing on exporting Taiwanese fruit to China, which recently promised to exempt 15 types of Taiwanese agricultural products from tariffs, was not a good idea.
"Quality Taiwanese fruit and other agricultural products deserve to be promoted in advanced countries that consume a large amount of quality products, rather than developing countries," Su said.
Meanwhile, representatives of opposition parties, including the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the People First Party (PFP) visited the Council of Agriculture (COA) yesterday, to urge council officials to facilitate exporting Taiwanese agricultural products to China.
Hu Fu-Hsiung (胡富雄), deputy minister of the council, said that the semi-official Taiwan External Trade and Development Council (TAITRA) had been designated by the government as the only agency to deal with fruit exports to China. Hu said the designation could ensure more transparent agricultural trade with China.
"In the future, bilateral negotiations on related issues, such as tariffs, quarantines, examination, and customs formalities, will be arranged by TAITRA, which will be assisted by agriculture experts, the COA and the Mainland Affairs Council," Hu said.
A total lunar eclipse coinciding with the Lantern Festival on March 3 would be Taiwan’s most notable celestial event this year, the Taipei Astronomical Museum said, urging skywatchers not to miss it. There would be four eclipses worldwide this year — two solar eclipses and two lunar eclipses — the museum’s Web site says. Taiwan would be able to observe one of the lunar eclipses in its entirety on March 3. The eclipse would be visible as the moon rises at 5:50pm, already partly shaded by the Earth’s shadow, the museum said. It would peak at about 7:30pm, when the moon would
Taiwan’s Li Yu-hsiang performs in the men’s singles figure skating short program at the Milano-Cortina Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, on Tuesday. Li finished 24th with a score of 72.41 to advance to Saturday’s free skate portion of the event. He is the first Taiwanese to qualify for the free skate of men’s singles figure skating at the Olympics since David Liu in 1992.
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) yesterday held a ceremony marking the delivery of its 11th Anping-class offshore patrol vessel Lanyu (蘭嶼艦), saying it would boost Taiwan’s ability to respond to Beijing’s “gray zone” tactics. Ocean Affairs Council Deputy Minister Chang Chung-Lung (張忠龍) presided over the CGA event in the Port of Kaoshiung. Representatives of the National Security Council also attended the event. Designed for long-range and protracted patrol operations at sea, the Lanyu is a 65.4m-long and 14.8m-wide ship with a top speed of 44 knots (81.5kph) and a cruising range of 2,000 nautical miles (3704km). The vessel is equipped with a
Two siblings in their 70s were injured yesterday when they opened a parcel and it exploded, police in Yilan said, adding the brother and sister were both in stable condition. The two siblings, surnamed Hung (洪), had received the parcel two days earlier but did not open it until yesterday, the first day of the Lunar New Year holiday in Taiwan, police said. Chen Chin-cheng (陳金城), head of the Yilan County Government Police Bureau, said the package bore no postmark or names and was labeled only with the siblings’ address. Citing the findings of a
RSS