All Pakistan Fruit and Vegetable Exporters, Importers and Merchants Association (PFVA) has announced mango export target as 150000 metric tons for the current mango season which would fetch valuable foreign exchange of USD 127.5 million once the target is attained.
Patron-in-Chief PFVA, Waheed Ahmad stated in a statement issued here on Tuesday that last year the export target of mango was set as 80,000 tons keeping in view the drastic significant negative impact on the economy due to COVID-19 Pandemic and subsequent logistics challenges.
However, due to an extra-ordinary demand of mangoes globally, the export was enhanced to 140000 tons, generating valuable foreign exchange of US $ 120 million. Waheed Ahmed informed that on one hand Pakistani mango industry of Rs. 100 billion is facing serious issues of climatic changes and scarcity of water. While on other hand, he said, limited flight operations, restrictions by numerous destinations on flights and higher air freights increases cost of export, contrary to last year, the export of mangoes via sea this year faces stiff challenges due to shortage of reefer containers and high freight cost.
Of the total export volume of mangoes, 55 percent is exported by sea, 25 percent by land routes and 20 percent by Air. The PFVA has urged the government that the promising International markets of Russia and China shall be focused for export of mangoes having immense export potential and strongly recommended to conduct Mango promotions for wide
publicity of mangoes.
He further added that by following realistic strategy under patronage of the GoP, Pakistan could be included in the list of top three mango exporting countries of the world within a period of 4 – 5 years, however, to accomplish that it is imperative to focus our attention on high value markets such as Japan, USA, Australia, South Korea and China.
He stressed upon the need for an extensive Research & Development (R&D) to improve quality and cosmetic look to get an easy access to these markets which have strong faith in “quality & impressive appearance” of the fruit.
Waheed disclosed that climatic changes are having serious negative impacts on the crops of mangoes for the last five years resulting in shortage of mango production coupled with further addition of two weeks in the harvesting period of the mango crops and besides delay in maturity of the mango crops the resilient capability of mangoes against various diseases is also getting weakened.
Due to these factors, the current mango season is likely to witness a significant drop in production of mangoes. The overall production of mangoes in the provinces of Sindh and Punjab is anticipated to be 1800000 tons, however due to the effect of the climatic changes the possibility of reduction in production by 15 percent could not be ruled out.