The head of the Association of Blueberry Producers (Apama), Alejandro Pannunzio, stated that a delegation of the Chinese government would visit the province in September to inspect the blueberry production from Entre Rios, a necessary step to authorize this products export to that country.
"The protocol to be able to export to that country was approved, so a delegation from China will review the fields in September to authorize our exports," he said.
The protocol mentioned by Pannunzio is the phytosanitary framework that the Senasa authorities agreed with the Asian government.
This delegation would give the final okay to export the product to the Chinese market, he said. "We should be making the first shipments after that visit," he added.
"What we are doing now is training the human resources that work in the fields in the control of some pests and diseases, which is what we have been doing all along," he stated.
The difficulty now is the tariff protection that the Asian giant imposes on the product. "The issue is that Argentina has a 30% tariff to enter China. There is an important part of the Argentine population that does not want a free trade agreement, which opens the market, but in which we have to pay 30%," he said.
According to Pannunzio, "If we say that there is a tariff barrier, it would seem we are being discriminated against and that's not how we should see things. The truth is that, since Argentina doesn't have a habit of signing free trade agreements to defend certain activities, tariffs of this type are imposed on others activities. We have an open market that we can't exploit completely," he said.
Source: APF Digital