Last Friday, the Government of Ecuador announced a plan to help the country's small banana producers. According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock (MAG), the objective of this plan is to provide an economic subsidy to small banana producers registered in the institution. At an early stage, the subsidy would be aimed at producers with up to 10 hectares in the provinces affected by the economic crisis caused by the war between Russia and Ukraine, and that have been impacted by the Black Sigatoka.

The plan includes the financial subsidy of up to a certain number of plants with calculated clusters per hectare, which would benefit more than 4,000 small producers starting in the next few days.

In addition to these subsidies, the government is working on a plan that includes the delivery of agricultural input kits, which contain materials for the nutrition and phytosanitary control of the plantations. Part of these will be subsidized by the MAG.

In addition, thanks to the support of the Presidency of the Republic, Executive Decree 1127 will be reformed, in order to eliminate the possibility of duplicating the fruit's quality control. The proposal is to only carry out the quality inspection at the time that the product is delivered to the packing facilities. Agrocalidad will only verify phytosanitary issues.

Executive Decree 183 will also be repealed so that there are no authorizations for the sowing of new banana plantations.

Finally, the entity stated, the MAG and BanEcuador presented the debt refinancing and restructuring plan that begins the following week to relieve the financial pressure faced by small producers.

Source - https://www.freshplaza.com