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, Laetitia Bézain
” 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 the Big Island. He also deplores the complicity of importers in the illegal arrangements or false declarations made by certain unscrupulous exporters.
If the non-compliance the export floor price for vanilla 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 export prices, we also break the price of the raw material, that is to say the green vanilla that we buy from the planters », Condemns Georges Geeraerts.
Because if the government fixed green vanilla at 75,000 ariary per kilo to farmers, few can sell it at this price, laments a president of a planters association:
” Intermediaries buy us the kilo at 40 000 or 50 000 ariaryhe 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.