LAHORE: Already hit badly by the Afghan government’s imposition of higher duty on kinnow, exporters of the mandarin fruit are facing soaring freight charges by shipping companies in the wake of Houthis’ attacks on ships in the Red Sea.

“Two shipping companies have withdrawn themselves from the region, while others have changed their routes to avert attacks by Houthis in the Red Sea, leading to an exorbitant hike in freight charges,” bemoans Shoaib Ahmed Basra, a leading exporter from Sargodha.

The shipping lines are now operating around Africa instead of the Red Sea and Suez Canal to avoid attacks by Yemeni rebels and have begun charging up to $3000 per container more, while the detour has also increased the transition time from 25-35 days to 50-60 days, he says.

The shelf life of kinnow has already shrunk from 60 days to between 20-30 days due to ‘ageing’ of the variety, besides a couple of other reasons, and now the extra time to be consumed by ship liners will hurt the fruit quality, he fears.

The fruit is being exported to UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Russia through the shipping companies, and toKazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan by road.

Shipping giant Maersk said on Friday that it would divert all its vessels around Africa instead of using the Red Sea and Suez Canal routes for the “foreseeable future” after the Yemeni rebels attacked its merchant ships,reported Al-Monitor, a Middle East based news website.

Mr Basra says the extraordinarily higher customs duty, Rs2.9 million per trailer, imposed by Afghanistan last season still persists, which is making the fruit noncompetitive in Russian and Central Asian markets.

He says the duty is manifold higher than the actual cost of fruit packed in a container.

“Almost 60 percent of the small-size produce, which was meant for Russia and neighbouring states, is now stuck up in the local markets, 50pc of the factories have closed and the rest are on half of their capacity because of enough availability of quality kinnow,” he laments.

The fruit quality is also deteriorating with each passing season and growers blame the agricultural research institutions for not coming up with new varieties of kinnow.

Muhammad Hanif Hanjra, an orchard owner, says that kinnow trees are not only failing to produce full size fruit and have dropped their yield, they are also more prone to diseases leading to dull skin colour and blackish spots on the fruit skin.

He urged the agriculture authorities, particularly the Sargodha Citrus Research Institute, to develop a new variety at the earliest which is more robust in the changing climatic conditions and resistant to diseases.

Published in Dawn, January 6th, 2024