Mozambique: Banana exports fall to multi-year low in 2023 after storms in south

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Mozambique: Banana exports fall to multi-year low in 2023 after storms in south

11:21 CAT | 07 May 2024

File photo: Carta de Moçambique

Exports of bananas from Mozambique, one of the world’s 30 largest producers, last year fell to their lowest value in more than six years, at $32.3 million (€30.2 million), according to data from the Bank of Mozambique.

Data on the value of the country’s various exports, shows that this performance compares with banana exports of $41.4 million (€38.7 million) in 2022, little changed from 2021, while in 2017 this export yielded as much as $32.8 million (€30.6 million).

Businesses have warned of the possibility of a shortage of agricultural products in the south of the country in the coming weeks, due to the consequences of successive floods, saying that prices may rise and pointing to difficulties in the banana sector.

“We’re going to try to manage it as best we can with the ministry and also with the institutions that monitor the situation so that this doesn’t happen,” the vice-president of the Confederation of Economic Associations of Mozambique (CTA), Maria Assunção Abdula, said at a recent news conference in Maputo. “But you know it’s a reality and it’s hard to get away from it. Product shortages always bring this situation.”

She gave the example of the banana sector, where revenues “are already highly jeopardised” for this year “due to excessive rains and winds that, in addition to causing direct damage, falling plants and compromising the respective shoots… are also leading to the emergence of many pests.”

Maputo province, and other regions in the south of the country, have been affected in the last month by successive heavy rains and winds, which have caused several floods, conditioning various activities.

In 2021, Maputo province alone had 22 private companies involved in banana production, 80% of which was exported to other African countries, according to government figures. In that year, the province produced 249,829 tonnes, on an area of 5,141 hectares, of which 4,719 hectares were farmed by private commercial companies and the rest by small producers, mostly families.

“Fruit production contributes 3.9 per cent to the overall value of agricultural production in this part of the country,” states the same government report of Maputo province, going on to cite figures for 2021. “This sector is one of the biggest generators of direct employment in the agricultural sector, with an average of 1.3 workers/hectare, which means around 6,100 direct jobs and 11,000 indirect jobs, totalling around 17,100 workers.”

Source: Lusa