The Minister of Agriculture of the Dominican Republic, Osmar Benitez, said that the Dominican Republic wanted to secure a space in the Russian tropical-fruit market.
"We are here to pursue our goal, which is to quickly enter the Russian tropical-fruit market," Benitez said at the 27th edition of the WorldFood Fair in Moscow, in which the Dominican Republic is participating for the first time as a country.
The Dominican minister said that the agricultural products of his country still had no presence in Russian supermarkets.
However, he said, a large number of Russian tourists who come to the Dominican Republic - 243,000 people a year, according to his estimate - "enjoy eating the mangoes, bananas, pineapples, and papaya produced in the Dominican Republic, which have the best quality, flavor, and sweetness in the world."
"We want to be in these supermarkets, and that is why we are here. We want to enter the market of a country that has more than 140 million citizens with purchasing power," said Benitez.
The head of Agriculture said that Dominican exporters were already working with a shipping company based in St. Petersburg which already travels to a port in the northern coast of the Caribbean nation; a port that is largely dedicated to the export of bananas.
"We are already sending bananas from the Dominican Republic to Russia via the port of St. Petersburg. The idea is that we can also send avocados and mangoes, which we have brought, so that consumers here can see the difference between our products and the products from other countries that are our competition," he said.
Benitez said that, since he was in the country until September 21, he planned to go to St. Petersburg to visit that Russian shipping company.
He also said that the Dominican government delegation had come to the fair to get to know the opportunities offered by the Russian market.
"This is an opportunity that allows us to see what demand there is, what Russian consumers want, what products they prefer, what quality they want, and what price they are willing to pay," the minister said.
More than 1,500 companies from 62 countries are participating in the WorldFood fair, which opened on Monday in the Russian capital and will last until September 20.
Source: Sputnik