In a few days, producers and exporters will meet to set the new price of the banana box for international contracts that will be in force for all of 2024. In 2023, the price was set at $6.50; as a result, not all of the fruit was sold under signed contracts.
In fact, the producing sector has recognized that only 30% of the fruit marketed was sold under signed contracts and that the rest had been marketed under spot market prices.
Franklin Torres, the president of the National Federation of Banana Growers (Fenabe), said they would propose increasing the price of a box of bananas for 2024 to $8.01.
This figure is the result of the studies of annual production and maintenance costs - based on an area of 50 hectares with a production of 2,000 boxes per hectare - that the sector will present at the technical tables in the coming weeks and represents the production cost per box of bananas, calculated at $7.28, plus a "reasonable" 10% profit that corresponds to $0.73 per box. Cost calculations.
The study includes six variables to calculate these costs: direct labor was calculated at $6,988.87 and indirect labor at $1,119.71; in addition to inputs ($4,952.52), depreciation of infrastructure and equipment ($358), miscellaneous materials ($88.87), and miscellaneous taxes and services ($1,055.50), which add up to a cost of $14,563.47 per hectare.
Meanwhile, the export sector will reach the negotiations, which they foresee for the second half of October, with the idea of maintaining the current price of the fruit, that is, $6.50 per box. According to Richard Salazar, executive director of the Association of Banana Marketers and Exporters of Ecuador (Acorbanec), there is a high sensitivity of international markets to the price of the fruit.
Source: eluniverso.com
