This Friday, November 10, the Association for the Marketing and Export of Bananas (Acorbanec) celebrates 7 years since it received legal status in the Ministry of Foreign Trade in 2016. Currently, the union consists of 61 members, representing 43% of the country’s total banana exports.

In seven years, Acorbanec has become one of the most important banana unions in Ecuador, Latin America and the world, said its CEO Richard Salazar. “This was possible thanks to the teamwork between all the partners and their management boards, who, together with the authorities and other actors in the chain, had the main goal of improving the competitiveness of Ecuador’s banana exports, as well as promoting the development of sustainable and sustainable fruit production,” said Salazar.

Richard Salazar: The village seduced me from the first moment, I never needed a plan B

He emphasized that in 2023, fruit exports to international destinations showed a growth of 6% compared to 2022, which is an important figure if you take into account some adversities that lasted throughout that time, such as deflation in China, which affected on world foreign trade, or high inflation rates that were further complicated by the war between Russia and Ukraine and which continues today in most of the countries to which Ecuador exports bananas, as well as the climate that affected banana production.

Furthermore, Salazar stated that the Ecuadorian banana sector is currently the global benchmark for achieving the sustainability of its products and guaranteeing the security of the supply chain. “The country’s efforts in terms of workforce sustainability have been recognized by international organizations such as Germany’s GIZ, which, through its analysis conducted between 2020 and 2021, found that banana plantations in our country participating in programs aimed at the market in Germany 99.34% of workers receive a value equal to or greater than the living wage,” said the executive director of Acorbanec.

He also highlighted the participation of the Union in the fourth annex created by the Ministry of Foreign Trade for the signing of trade agreements with China and South Korea this year, because the future is to increase the export of Ecuadorian bananas in East Asia. with China, Japan and South Korea.

Ecuador hopes to go from fourth supplier of bananas to South Korea, which is now the Philippines, after trade deal

“The positive thing about this is that in the case of China, that 10% tariff that our bananas pay will be reduced in ten years; and in the case of South Korea, the 30% tariff will be reduced in five years. The new Government must continue with this trend in order to provide our fruit with access to different markets. The new Parliament must and must ratify the signing of these trade agreements,” said the spokesperson of the Banana Union.