Published on : 12/06/2022 – 04:57
In Madagascar, as the vanilla export campaign comes to an end on June 30, voices are being raised to denounce the failure to respect the minimum export selling price of this highly prized spice. A price fixed, like the two previous years, at 250 dollars per kilo by the Malagasy government to limit the volatility of the prices of the product and to perpetuate the sector. But some exporters slash prices, particularly to the detriment of local growers.
With our correspondent in Antananarivo, Like Laetitia
“Offers of vanilla from Madagascar have been made outside the country at prices between 150 and 180 dollars per kilo”, regrets Georges Geeraerts, president of the Group of vanilla exporters from Madagascar. He also deplores the complicity of importers in illegal arrangements or false declarations made by certain unscrupulous exporters.
“The Malagasy government continues to enforce the minimum vanilla export price currently set at USD 250.00/kg. But as was the case last year, the actual market price of vanilla has been well below this level and exporters are finding increasingly ingenious methods to make up the difference between the actual selling price and the price mandatory export without violating the minimum price policy,” reads the May 2022 report from Aust & Hachmann, one of North America’s largest vanilla buyers.
A report which “shows once once more that sustainable and fair initiatives are only ‘façadisme’ for certain unscrupulous importers”, reacts the president of the group of vanilla exporters.
“The Malagasy government and the group of vanilla exporters from Madagascar strongly condemn these practices and controls will be put in place to stop this attitude which jeopardizes the development of the vanilla sector, the flagship of Malagasy agriculture”, continues- he.
If the non respect of vanilla floor price export represents a loss of revenue for the Malagasy State, it is also the farmers, who are no longer paid a decent rate: “When we break the export prices, we also break the price of the material first, that is to say the green vanilla that we buy from the planters”, emphasizes Georges Geeraerts.
Because if the government has set green vanilla at 75,000 ariary (18 euros) per kilo for farmers, few can sell it at this price, laments a president of an association of planters. “The intermediaries buy us a kilo at 40,000 or 50,000 ariary,” he explains. We want to discuss directly with importers. We are experiencing large losses in relation to our investments for our vanilla. If this continues, the planters will stop growing it because it is no longer profitable for us,” he concludes.
According to the latest figures from the group of vanilla exporters from Madagascar, 2,300 tonnes were exported during this campaign. Madagascar remains the world’s leading producer and exporter of the precious black pod.