Jorge Hernando Pedraza, the president of the CAN, is traveling to Ecuador where he’ll meet with the banana sector

“20 months ago the Fusarium pest was 1,200 kilometers away from Ecuador and now it’s 350 kilometers”

Jorge Hernando Pedraza, the Secretary-General of the Andean Community (CAN), arrived in Ecuador with a priority agenda: agreeing on actions to prevent the advance of Fusarium race 4 (which was detected in Piura, Peru, in April) in the region.

“We must recall that there was an outbreak in Colombia 20 months ago and that we immediately took actions to prevent it from advancing. The CAN held meetings in Quito that were attended by 18 ministers of Agriculture, from Mexico to Patagonia, delegates from the FAO and other organizations, as well as representatives from the banana productive sectors. At that time the experts warned that the pest could reappear at any moment. Two months ago it reappeared in Piura. Twenty months ago it was 1,200 kilometers away from Ecuador and now it is 350 kilometers away, so urgent measures must be taken to avoid the collapse of the crop,” he said.

“We started to work from the first moment we found about this. The four Ministers of Agriculture of Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, and Bolivia were summoned. Peru has done an important job. I’ll discuss the issue with the Minister of Agriculture and will raise the issue at the Andean presidential summit, on July 2, in Villa de Leyva, where President Guillermo Lasso will assume the pro tempore presidency of the CAN, from the hands of President Ivan Duque. The day after tomorrow I will meet with the entire banana cluster in Guayaquil, to take measures and coordinate commitments with multilateral organizations to obtain resources to preserve the banana sector, which is a very important source of income for Ecuador (about 3.4 billion dollars) and for the CAN.”

“In addition, we are going to continue carrying out programs that came from the pro tempore presidency of Colombia, emphasizing the improvement of relations with Europe and opening up solid relations with Eurasia (a bloc of five countries: Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, and Armenia), which is important to increase the business relationship. We have worked a lot on competitiveness, on the training of MSMEs, and on the recovery of the post-pandemic economic apparatus. Issues that Ecuador considers important.”

In fact, the CAN has not been an exception and the pandemic has hit the region hard, both in its health and economic level. “In 2018 our exports amounted to 120,000 million dollars and we were the eleventh world economy. In 2019 we reached 115 billion, and in 2020 we fell to 97 billion, with an impact of 12%. However, we think we could have a 5% recovery this year,” stated Jorge Hernando.

Source: eluniverso.com 

Publication date: Mon 28 Jun 2021