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    Uganda hor­ti­cul­tural ex­ports sur­vive EU ban

    Ugandan hor­ti­cul­ture in­dustry has nar­rowly es­caped a ban on its ex­ports to European Union which had earlier ac­cused it of non com­pli­ance of the set safety stand­ards. The com­mit­ment by the hor­ti­cul­tural reg­u­lat­ory body to rein in on er­rant ex­port­ers has seen the EU relax the ban. This com­ing at a time when Kenya’s fresh pro­duce has faced sim­ilar bans on the grounds that its pro­duce con­tains harm­ful chem­ic­als.

    In Uganda, the ban which was threat­en­ing the rising sec­tor arose when some con­sign­ments of the ex­ports failed to com­ply with the phytosan­it­ary cer­ti­fic­a­tion re­quire­ments earlier in Oc­to­ber 2014. A phytosan­it­ary cer­ti­fic­a­tion is is­sued to in­dic­ate that con­sign­ments of plants, plant products or other reg­u­lated art­icles meet spe­cified im­port re­quire­ments and are in con­form­ity with the cer­ti­fy­ing state­ment of the ap­pro­pri­ate model.

    The ban which was set to be im­ple­men­ted next month (Novem­ber 2014) fol­lowed a no­ti­fic­a­tion from Brus­sels Bel­gium ex­plain­ing the dis­cov­ery of traces of live in­sects in hot pep­per, flowers and chil­lies, something which is risky to human lives and is against the set safety stand­ards. EU dis­covered African cot­ton leaf worm in roses and the false cod­ing moth in red pep­pers res­ult­ing in the ex­port ban threat.

    The is­su­ance of the cau­tion state­ment to the hor­ti­cul­tural sec­tor and the threat of los­ing the luc­rat­ive EU mar­ket have fuelled heightened ef­forts to­wards erad­ic­a­tion and curb­ing any fu­ture oc­cur­rence. The Hor­ti­cul­ture play­ers and reg­u­lat­ors blame the un­scru­pu­lous middle men traders who are mo­tiv­ated by huge profits and sweep­ing under the car­pet the pre­requis­ite pro­ced­ures for qual­ity con­trol.

    The Hor­ti­cul­tural Ex­port­ers As­so­ci­ation (Hor­texa) chair­man, John Lule noted in earlier in­ter­view, “There are so many middle­men who have failed to fol­low the trace­ab­il­ity sys­tem and in­stead just buy com­mod­it­ies from any farmer. This has ruined the qual­ity of ex­ports.” He fur­ther ad­vised that nor­mally, an ex­porter has to com­ply with trace­ab­il­ity sys­tem so that if there is a prob­lem-say if a chem­ical which is dan­ger­ous for human con­sump­tion was used, it can be linked to its source.

    Fol­low­ing con­cer­ted ef­fort and due di­li­gence among the sec­tor play­ers, the EU has now softened its stance and hal­ted plans to ban ag­ri­cul­tural ex­ports from Uganda giv­ing the farm­ers, traders and the eco­nomy a life­line. EU’s pro­gramme of­ficer for trade in Uganda, Céline Prud’homme Mad­sen, ex­plained that sanc­tions against Uganda have been put on hold be­cause EU has re­ceived prom­ising pro­gress of ac­tion on the er­rant ex­port­ers. “The EU del­eg­a­tion in Uganda has been work­ing in close con­tact with the ag­ri­cul­ture and trade min­is­tries on the mat­ter. The re­cent im­ple­ment­a­tion of the ac­tion plan seems to have had an im­pact on the num­ber of in­ter­cep­tions at EU bor­ders. The ban has been avoided for now.”

    About 170 fresh com­mod­ity ex­port­ers and over 8000 thou­sand farm­ers in­volved in the ex­port chain were set to lose out on their live­li­hood if the ban would have ma­ter­i­al­ized. Ac­cord­ing to stat­ist­ics from Ex­port Pro­mo­tion Board, over 6,500 tonnes of flowers were ex­por­ted from Uganda to EU in 2013.

    The gov­ern­ment was also star­ing at massive rev­enue losses fol­low­ing the ban threat as be­cause the hor­ti­cul­ture sec­tor is among the luc­rat­ive ex­chequer for­eign cur­rency earner. In 2013 the gov­ern­ment rev­en­ues amount­ing to over UGX95 bil­lion from the flower sec­tor alone ac­cord­ing to Ex­port Pro­mo­tion Board.

    Re­cently in Kenya which has suffered from the ban, more than 5,000 hor­ti­cul­ture farm­ers and 11 hor­ti­cul­ture firms were banned from ex­port­ing fresh pro­duce to the European Union (EU) mar­ket. The with­drawal of li­cences arose from the high levels of pesti­cides and other harm­ful or­gan­isms in their pro­duce

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