Measures to Facilitate Export of Agricultural Products

DAMASCUS, (ST) – Minister of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform, Eng. Subhi Al-Abdullah, expressed his ministry’s intention to allow the workers in the agricultural sector to export and import agricultural seeds  smoothly in parallel with efforts to resolve all the problems that stand in front of the export of agricultural products to friendly countries.
During a meeting held yesterday with the Federation of Chambers of Agriculture, Damascus Chamber of Agriculture and Syrians Exporters Association, the minister pointed out that a committee had been formed to develop the guidelines for the overall technical matters concerning the exchange of agricultural products, saying that the federation of Chambers of Agriculture and Exporters’ Association are the best to take over commodity exchange within the national vision set by the government.

“This meeting will discuss the problems that hinder the export of agricultural products under the new vision set by the government for products that can be exported and imported from some friendly countries that exchange goods,” the minister clarified.
He added that this national vision of commodity exchange protects economy and prevents  problems that could face exporters at present time due to the unfair economic sanctions imposed on Syria, adding that “Activating commodity exchange ensures hard currency and help in exporting the surplus of agricultural products as well as importing materials needed by the citizens.”
For his part, chairman of the Federation of Chambers of Agriculture, Muhammad Kashto, said that “the process of commodity exchange is very important at the moment and enters within the developed economic work and needs to be studied deliberately and correctly”.
For his part, Chairman of the Damascus Chamber of Agriculture, Omar Shalet, called for preparing the Syrian agricultural product properly and improving it to be ready for export, promoting the desired agricultural species in some countries, pointing out that Syrian cherry entered most European countries, as one of the most important agricultural products and we are currently working on export to Russia and Ukraine.
Shalet reviewed the problems that prevent the export of certain goods abroad, such as “choosing the appropriate product for the state and good packaging as well as transport and cooling processes.”
He called on the participants to “reducing tariffs on potato seeds, exempting the flowers sector of customs declaration and giving more attention to the economic importance, accelerating the completion of the necessary analysis for seeds due to be exported.”

The conferees stressed the need to prepare a legislation that allows the researcher to sell his research to anyone and give a percentage of its value the fact that there is a lot of research that enables us to produce and export seeds of many vegetables of good productivity.”
Association of the  Syrians Exporters reviewed the quantities of agricultural and animal products that can be exported annually indicating that it can export 1000 tons of chickpeas, 1000 tons of cumin, 2500 tons of peanuts, 1500 tons of green peas, 3 thousand tons of green beans, 48,500 tons of potatoes, 1500 tons of pumpkins, 2300 tons of green beans ,1000 tons of okra, 85 thousand tons of olive and 40 thousand tons of table grapes, 5500 tons of cherries, 4 thousand tons of pistachio, 40 thousand tons of oranges and 15 thousand tons of Karmantina (kind of orange), 15 thousand tons of grapefruit.
Concerning animal products the association pointed out that it can export 51,000 tons of cow milk,  4,000  tons of beef cheese, 18,500 head of sheep, 175, 000 table eggs, 20, 000 eggs hatching Chicken, 32, 000 eggs hatching egg, 100 tons of honey and 16,500 tons of olive oil.

Sh.  Kh.