Breaking the 20 dirham barrier.. The continued rise in fruit prices provokes citizens’ discontent, and Adharour links the matter to the “import” factor

Agadir24

Large segments of Moroccan citizens, especially those with limited income, expressed their dissatisfaction with the recent jump in the prices of various fruits, including seasonal fruits, following they reached levels they described as “record-breaking.”

It seems that the recorded increases covered various types of fruits in different regions of the Kingdom, as they were recorded in semi-wholesale and wholesale markets for vegetables and fruits, as well as in retail fruit stores.

After hopes were pinned on a decline in the prices at which fruits were sold in previous weeks, the opposite happened, as they continued on a high trend at the beginning of this week, sometimes breaking the barrier of 20 dirhams per kilogram, for some types.

According to professionals, the price of bananas has risen to between 14 and 15 dirhams in wholesale markets, while it has exceeded 20 dirhams in retail stores. The same applies to the price of peaches, which has approached 15 dirhams, while the prices of “shahidiya” range between 10 and 15 dirhams at most.

In response to this topic, Al-Hussein Adardour, President of the Interprofessional Federation of Producers and Exporters of Vegetables and Fruits in Morocco, revealed that “the lack of rainfall and successive years of drought have greatly contributed to the decline in agricultural production of certain types of fruits, which has encouraged the resort to imports in order to fill the local deficit of these fruits.”

Adardour explained that “the prices of imported fruits are much higher than their counterparts in Europe, and this is normal given the high cost of transportation and shipping from abroad,” noting that “the most consumed basic agricultural products are available in national markets at reasonable prices.”

The same speaker added that “fruits are not basic meals, but rather secondary… and therefore, the high prices do not pose any problem to the average citizen,” noting that “some of the assortments whose prices appear to exceed the purchasing power of the Moroccan citizen can be dispensed with, especially since they are not part of his consumer culture.”

The professional actor concluded that “the matter is related to climatic and natural factors that have produced this situation for us,” stressing that “what is important is that the citizen finds in the markets today those products that he has been accustomed to consuming and cannot do without,” according to his expression.