The Minister of Agriculture and Irrigation (Minagri), Jose Hernandez Calderon, stated that Peru would become the world's leading exporter of blueberries in the next two years as a result of the growth of crop areas and access to new international markets.
According to statistics from the Minagri, he stated, blueberry production, in the first three months of the year, had increased fourfold compared to the same period of 2015.
"Between January and December 2015 we produced 10,300 tons of blueberries and the main target market was the United States", Calderon said.
He added that La Libertad accounted for 90% of the total domestic production, because of the amount of crops available and the size of companies.
During his presentation before the Parliament's budget Commission, Calderon emphasised the great potential of agricultural exports in the coming years, and the recent agreement, reached with Colombia at the beginning of this week, to open its market to five Peruvian agricultural products.
He then stated that the actions of the sector were aimed at enabling the development of local agricultural markets.
"Our goal is to achieve an annual GDP growth of no less than 4% and to double the agricultural exports to 10,000 million dollars by the year 2021," he said. He added that, last year, the country's agricultural exports had surpassed 5.2 billion dollars.
Source: gestion.pe