With the level of uncertainty worsening and the climate phenomenon looming ever closer, the outlook for the food and beverage industry is not encouraging. The National Association of Food and Beverage Manufacturers (Anfab) reports that in the first quarter of 2023, this sector declined by 2.95% year-on-year and therefore its growth forecasts for this year, which were 1.5%, should be adjusted according to below, according to the economic report for August. bulletin. The sale of agricultural and food products by June reached 16.885 million dollars. Its CEO, Christian Wahli, talks about what the sector is facing and how it affects prices.

What is the industry like?

It is not growing, there are internal and external problems. There are items that have been affected, the price of shrimp has started to fall, there is a serious drop in fish output of almost 15 percent less. And the oil is also almost 10% less. And in the interior of the country, you go shopping and you see that everything is more expensive, inflation is in the food sector. We are sustaining ourselves, but things are complicated and exports are difficult because Ecuador exports products that are not essential.

It is not a very positive balance and more complicated things are yet to come: work is being done on the labeling of nutritional values, which will affect consumption and industry at the beginning of 2024 due to the costs of labeling. There is a network of roads for transportation and distribution, and on the Costa El Niño it will be serious.

Is higher food inflation expected for Primorje?

Yes of course. What is produced on the Coast will have problems.

When might you see an effect due to weather? What happened in the previous events?

We have a sugar problem, a corn problem is already emerging, and the rest are imported raw materials. The Sierra part has not been affected as much, although milk has been a problem, and another thing that has been affected in the Sierra is quinoa, which is most affected by the rains and also price fluctuations…. I know there were problems in bananas, African palm, corn, rice, mango, pineapple, everything was affected.

This weeks presence of El Niño could be officially declared in Ecuador, can a little more be produced to have a reserve?

No, because the cost of money is high, to have stock It’s expensive. It is not the best way to deal with this phenomenon, but we must add the issue of safety to the problems of road traffic that will appear in the coming months. A huge impact on the entire food distribution system, because we go through all the neighborhoods and ‘vaccines’ and extortions happen every day, thefts happen every day, the issue of safety of food distribution is critical.

Companies and workers change their routines, schedules and even their clothes to avoid theft and extortion

Are they already affected by vaccines?

Definitely. There are companies from Santo Domingo, Guayaquil obviously, the coast in general, there is not a week, not a day without complaints about vaccination, extortion, those types of problems.

Have you quantified it?

It’s hard for me to quantify, but businesses are affected. And there are also the problems of staff who no longer want to go to certain destinations for security reasons. And the same thing happens at the exit of the container from customs, there is a self-restriction that no longer wants to go out at night and creates logistical problems.

In terms of vehicle security, very little can be done, the country is almost militarized and attacks happily continue. We definitely depend on the authorities. This time everything revolves around the issue of prisons, where there are serious problems, murders, protection of the elected, protection of justice, and we are the fifth wheel in the car.

Do you have expectations with the new government?

None of them, and we don’t know what will happen to the remaining two, pre-election words are hardly credible, and the most serious thing is what kind of Assembly will be in front of whoever is elected.

The new government, which has very little time to do anything, should seize the opportunity and lay the groundwork to support the agri-food sector, because it creates jobs and foreign exchange, much more than oil, and now that we will have less oil to export. It is very important that we do our best for this, for this they need digitization of the field, professionalization of the field, safety in the field and the formation of those production units which, in our opinion, are cooperatives, which can be a very important element.

What is exported for oil, you almost have to pay for the import of fuel again, so you have a trade balance for that oil export that is almost zero. On the contrary, agro-food products represent $12,000 million (in exports and) to produce they need $3,000 million in imports, leaving $9,000 million in foreign exchange for the country.