Latakia-SANA
The Minister of Internal Trade and Consumer Protection, Dr. Amr Salem, confirmed that the Syrian Trade Corporation will start, as of the beginning of next week, to extract citrus from farmers in Lattakia governorate directly to sell them in the establishment’s halls in all governorates within the measures of government support for farmers and marketing the season by reducing costs for them.
This came during a meeting at the Latakia Governorate building, which included Lattakia Governor Ibrahim Khader Al-Salem and representatives of the concerned authorities in the marketing process, during which Minister Salem stated that the institution set an indicative price for each item based on the proposal of the Ministry of Agriculture and the Peasants Union.
Minister Salem explained that the Syrian trade’s intervention will save farmers an additional cost of about 300 Syrian pounds per kilo by providing transportation, packaging and commission fees, and that the goal of the Syrian Trade Corporation is to cancel intermediary commissions and serve the farmer and the consumer at the same time, calling at the same time the Cardinal Market Committee to work to catch up with the Foundation’s footsteps Syrian Trade to provide more remunerative prices for farmers.
For his part, the Governor of Lattakia pointed to the importance of the citrus season for the governorate, in which more than 44,000 families work, and to a group of factors that led to a decrease in the production rate compared to previous years, indicating that the governorate took all necessary measures and harnessed its capabilities to support the marketing of the product by providing diesel for cars that transport the substance. To the Al-Hal market and facilitate the marketing of the product towards Al-Hasakah and the countryside of Aleppo.
He pointed out that the selling price of citrus in the al-Hal market has recently improved after these measures, and that so far about 15,000 tons have been marketed from the al-Hal market, in addition to other quantities that were marketed through the sorting and packaging centers in the governorate's markets.
For his part, the General Manager of the Corporation, Engineer Ziad Hazaa, pointed out that the Corporation will work on marketing the material and selling it in its halls, in addition to storing the additional quantities in refrigeration units, and endeavors to package and sort the product at the level of centers with the aim of introducing and promoting the product in a period of low production in order to maintain price stability and prevent farmers' loss. He pointed out that there is an integrated project with the Ministry of Internal Trade to produce plastic containers and nylon bags.
The head of the Cardamom Market Committee in the city of Lattakia, Mueen Al-Juhani, presented the reality of the season’s marketing work and the need to provide support to exporters of the agricultural sector, given that the local market consumes only about 20 percent of citrus production, pointing to a set of obstacles represented in the high costs of transportation, packaging, fees on transport vehicles and unloading the load from cars. On the borders, which also causes a decline in the quality of the product, confirming the improvement of prices in Al-Hal market with the opening of new markets in Al-Hasakah and the countryside of Aleppo.