Malaysia Plans To Export More Fruits To China

By Ng Che Yean BEIJING (China), April 12 (Bernama) -- Malaysia plans to bring more fruits such as jackfruit and pineapple into China, apart from durian, said the Malaysian Ministry of Agriculture and Agro Based Industry's Secretary General, Mohd Hashim. He said his ministry was negotiating with the related authorities for Malaysia to bring in more fruits into the country, adding that Malaysia had a lot of orchards producing various good quality fruits. The ministry will facillitate all parties involved to achieve the plan, he added. Towards this, the Federal Agriculture Marketing Authority (FAMA) of Malaysia and the China Agriculture Wholesale Market Association (CAWA) signed a Memorandum of Understanding last week in Beijing. Under the deal, FAMA will be the marketing arm for the export of Malaysian agricultural products to China, while CAWA will be its distributor partner to sell them through its strong, nationwide distribution network in China. Hashim said the demand for Malaysian durians in China was increasing but the supply was not sufficient. To help resolve this, he called on orchard owners to improve their orchard management, use new technology, and adopt good agricultural practices to increase the production of durians. He said setting up collection and distribution centres to collect good quality durians from the rural places would also help to resolve the problem of a shortage in durian supply. --BERNAMA