VIDEO: Alvaro Noboa Press Conference About the Banana Industry Prices in Ecuador



 

On Monday, June 11th, 2012, the leader Alvaro Noboa called the media to present a press conference about the Banana Industry Prices on Ecuador. The following is the speech given to the public:

Transcript:
As I am a presidential candidate, hundreds of banana farmers have come to me to complain that some exporters are not paying them the official price. They say that instead of paying them $ 5.50 which is the official price, they are paying them up to 2.50 or 3 dollars a box.

This has made the international market collapse because Ecuador is the largest producer and exporter in the world. It is Ecuador who sets the official price because of its export size.

Now that I have received this petition from the producers, I believe the only solution is to ask the government officials to stop promises and demand every exporter to pay the official price.

Dozens of times the government has offered that the local producers will receive the fair price of 5.50 dollars. But those are just words. At the moment, nothing is true. And today more than half of Ecuadorian producers receive a bad payment.

I am a farmer and so I stand besides the farmers. I see how they work every day, just to subsist. And with the price of $2.50 and $3.00, they will not survive, and will go to bankrupt. That will be the greatest economic crisis in Ecuador, because the banana is the largest employer in the country. This must stop immediately, this situation costs the country hundreds of millions of dollars and it costs the local producers their bankruptcy.

I am a farmer. I stand beside the ecuadorian farmer, the banana producer, and any producer that is willingly to receive a fair price.

I ask the State to stop making false promises and enforce the law in which the producers receive $ 5.50 for the production of each banana box. With that solution, the international market will recover automatically and the Ecuador will not delve into a terrible crisis that I wish it wouldn’t happen.