Morocco realizes this assessment, yet it announced on the eve of last Ramadan that it had restricted its tomato exports to Europe and sub-Saharan countries to counter the rising price of this fruit on its domestic market. Morocco’s competitors on the Spanish market are Portugal, which ranks second with 57,180 tonnes supplied to its neighbor for the same year, which corresponds to a total value of 31.75 million euros at an average price of 0.55 euros per kilo, the Netherlands, in third place with 20,510 tons, followed by Belgium (10,350 tons) and France (7,160 tons), indicates the same source.
Morocco had supplied, between August 1, 2019 and July 31, 2020, 80,280 tons of tomatoes to Spain, out of a total of 200,650 tons imported by this country, with a market share of 40%, according to Icex-Tax Agency. . Generally in 2021, 67% of European Union (EU) fresh tomato imports came from Morocco, followed by Turkey. For the European Union, in 2020, Morocco exported a total of 258.38 million kilos of tomatoes once morest a value of 315.98 million euros, which corresponds to a price of 1.22 euros per kilo, according to data collected in the Euroestacom statistical service (ICEX-Eurostat), by Hortoinfo.
A report from the European Commission (EC), on a quarterly basis, points out that alongside the drop in production and consumption, there is also a drop in Community exports of fresh tomatoes, due to Brexit and the the gradual loss of the United Kingdom market which, in 2021, represented 75% of Community tomato exports, and this loss of market is due, as the EC itself acknowledges, “to increased competition from Morocco “.
Over the past decade, the Kingdom has increased its tomato exports from the 443.81 million kilos it sold to other countries in 2012 to 629.51 million kilos in 2021, data Hortoinfo shows. collected from the United Nations (UN) Statistics Division.
