According to José Carbonell, president of the Argentine Citrus Federation (Federcitrus), the frost in July strongly impacted the summer lemon production volume, "causing a very significant drop in volume." Forecasts for this season, which started at the beginning of April and will run until the end of August or the beginning of September, are not very encouraging. Estimates are that production will be 10 to 15% lower than the average of previous seasons.
Carbonell, a citrus producer in Yerba Buena, Tucumán, spoke about the differences between the domestic and export markets. "Exports started with quite reasonable prices in Eastern Europe, Russia, and Ukraine," partly because Turkey left the market due to strong frosts and Spain had a drop in production." He also said that the US market, which was key in recent years, still had not implemented the measures announced by President Donald Trump, and that he thought that it would only start to move in May.
Carbonell also spoke about the economic challenge that export duties pose: "To this day, we have 10% withholdings that we didn't have last year." The impact of tariffs varies according to the context: "When there is a lot of demand, the consumer ends up paying them; if there is a lot of competition, the exporter pays them," he stated.
Argentina maintains its position as a key global player. It is a "world-leading fruit producer and the main industrializer of lemons," according to Carbonell. Despite this, domestic consumption stands at around 200,000 tons per year. This is a low consumption when compared to Chile, which consumes 150,000 to 170,000 tons with a significantly smaller population.
Carbonell was critical of the recent presidential statements on withholding taxes. "We were hopeful they would lift the tax cap, but the president had unfortunate words that sounded like things were going to get harder," which he believes contradicts previous campaign promises.
Source: www.infobae.com