The State Legislature has requested the President of the Republic, Enrique Peña Nieto, through the local authorities, to create an inter-ministerial commission to urgently and without delay face the production and marketing crisis that the pineapple in the region of the Papaloapan Basin is experiencing because of the importation of pineapples from different countries, such as Costa Rica, Indonesia, and Malaysia.
In ordinary session, the deputies proposed that the Secretary of Finance and Public Credit (SHCP), the Ministry of Economy, and the Secretariat of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, Fisheries and Food (Sagarpa) participate in the commission.
The deputy for the Movement of National Regeneration Movement (Brunette), Irineo Molina Espinoza, said that the problems faced by pineapple producers had begun in the nineties, when the liberation of the market was irresponsibly promoted.
As a result of this liberation, he said, Mexico had immediately adapt its pineapple production to the world market's conditions.
"However, instead of modernizing the countryside and increasing agricultural subsidies, the Mexican government chose to import pineapples from other countries, such as Costa Rica, Thailand, and Malaysia because of its low cost, bankrupting more than 2 thousand national producers," he said.
In November last year, a ton of pineapple was worth 5 thousand pesos, in recent days a ton cost 600 pesos, he stressed.
"It's important to note that this problem has grown considerably since 2000, got worse in 2014, and has become critical since November 2017 to date, when prices decreased by 85 percent and got to 600 pesos."
Thus, he said, the intervention of the federal and state executive to help the more than 2 thousand pineapple producers in the Papaloapan Basin region face this issue is urgent, as this merits special attention from those who the power to intervene.
"Otherwise, this will lead to an economic recession that will result in high unemployment and extreme poverty to the detriment of the families in the region," Molina Espinoza said.
Source: nvinoticias.com