"Ecuador: "Zero paper" to rule banana shipment plans"

From 19 March, Ecuadorian banana exporters will have to put down their shipment plans at www.magap.gob.ec/unibanano/, to be updated daily. This way, the information is controlled in real time. Alfonso Roggiero, director for the Banana Department in the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Water Culture and Fishing (MAGAP), announced it yesterday in Guayaquil. This way, businessmen will not have to bring documents to MAGAP offices any more, to manualy register weekly data, which caused delays on the provisional shipment plans and definitive ones. This was a cause for sanctions, as included in the "Banana Law", intensively applied since last month.

Forty companies were fined in US$48,800. The average delay on presenting this document was up to 2 or 3 days. For every late plan, exporters payed US$800. Sanctions were imposed by the former ministry Stanley Vera. One month before his exit, there's still no replacement.

Unibanano was also created to bring a better control on the commercialized fruit on the formal market and to identify "spot" boxes, meaning, boxes without contracts. “It's a zero paper system. Exporters can ship only fruit that is contracted with producers", said Roggiero adding: "Those deciding "spot sell have no State protection and can't complain later". In Ecuador, there's a minimum reference price for each box of fruit. Although, often this is not respected. In the begin of the year, there's the high season and it's when producers get better prices than the official one, but later it drops.

The set price is US$5.50 per each 41.5 pound box, but last year producers got up to US$1.5. Cecilio Jalil, president for the Association of Ecuador's Banana Industry (Asisbane) said that the guild is happy with this new model, because it fastens processes in a sector that represents the biggest share of exports in the country for non-oil products. "We support all move to modernise. The logistics were a bit complicated with so many papers. As it is a dynamic business, sometimes we had last minute contracts that weren't on the provisional shipment plan", he ended.

Source: ElComercio.com