In an interview with the Business Recorder here on Monday, CEO PHDEB commenting on reports that Indonesia has raised the duty on kino imports from Pakistan and reduced the duty to zero on import of the same item from China, said that officially no such intimation has been received from the Indonesian government in this regard.
"The duty has been increased equally on all kino imports from all countries and it is not true that Pakistan is being discriminated on this issue," he said. However, the matter has been taken up by the Pakistani embassy in Indonesia with Indonesian customs authorities to further clarify the situation.
Shamoon Sadiq said that the government authorities also heard about it from informal channels and embassy officials in Indonesia would be looking into the matter to verify whether this has been done unofficially by importers in case of Pakistan.
"The rationale behind increasing the duty", he said, "appears to be to protect the local growers from competition." He was optimistic that this duty increase would not affect Pakistan's export of kino to that country due to growing demand of the product. He said: "Half of Pakistan's kino exports goes to Far East region, while the rest is exported to Middle East, Russia and Western Europe."
Shamoon said that the PHDEB has embarked upon exploring new avenues for export of kino and a delegation would be leaving in a day or two for Eastern Europe to hold meetings with officials and importers of countries of this region for paving the way for kino export.
The delegation will visit Romania, Poland, Ukraine and some other countries and on the first leg of this tour, it would meet importers and distributors in Kiev,Ukrain on February 13.
On improving the horticulture products of the country, Shamoon said special emphasis has been laid in trade policy 2004 on improvement of infrastructure for processing and storage purposes. "Work on around 14 projects is at different stages," he said.
These include Agro Processing Zone with huge cold storage facility for kino in Salam Sargodha, export house for horticulture exporters in collaboration of the Punjab government, green houses in Balochistan, Karachi & Punjab for floriculture products, auction houses for floriculture and horticulture products, Tissue Culture Laboratory and some others.
Shamoon said that for the promotion of floriculture in Pakistan, services of a Dutch expert has been hired by the PHDEB to help improve expertise of local growers.
HIGHER FREIGHTS: On complaints of higher freights of refer containers, charged by shipping lines, he conceded that this problem surfaces each year due to higher demand of such types of containers for export of kino.
"We had asked shipping lines for a contract system envisaging fixed freight and availability of these containers to overcome this problem, however, this could not be materialised due to some reasons.
However, he expressed the hope that such arrangement would be finalised in future and issue would be taken up with shipping lines before the start of next mango season.