Engineer Maximo Gonzalez, a fruit and vegetable producer from Vaqueria and secretary of the Fruit and Vegetable Association of Caaguazu, said on Monday that contraband products filled the national market, especially those that enter illegally from Argentina and in recent weeks, from Brazil.
"We have many meetings with different agencies to fight against contraband but the control bodies do not work, specifically regarding the illegal entry of fruit and vegetable products to our country," he said.
There are plenty of tomatoes at the farms, and in many cases they rot because it can not be commercialized as the smuggled tomato is being offered at G. 2,000 per kilo and local produce at G. 500 and G. 700 per kilo," lamented the source.
On Monday's meeting at the MAG, producers demanded more control to prevent the illegal entry of products that abound in the country.
Last week producers requested a hearing with the President of the Republic to inform him about the critical situation that fruit and vegetable producers are facing due to smuggling.
He hopes that at that meeting, President Mario Abdo Benitez will talk to his officials so they optimize controls at border posts and thus protect national production.
He also said there were some officials of the National Plant and Seed Quality and Health Service (Senave) who seemed to remain forever in their posts and create inconveniences when managing documents. He said these few bad apples would conspire with smugglers at the border posts and facilitate documents of purchases of illegal products as if they were from Paraguay.
Meanwhile, the head of the MAG, Denis Lichi, said they were concerned about the contraband of fruit and vegetable products. "We are very worried. It was under control for a while but it had started to enter the country again since the Christmas holidays. We are going to be working and talking with control agencies in charge to take care of that so that we can protect our national production," he said.
Source: abc.com.py
