Slovenia encouraged to export farm products to China

Slovenia has been encouraged to export its farm products to the Chinese market by visiting Chinese deputy agriculture minister Chen Xiaohua when he met with his corresponding Slovenian host here on Monday.

Slovenian deputy prime minister and agriculture minister Dejan Zidan held talks with Chen and his delegation to discuss further exports of fish, poultry, pork and honey to China, after the Chinese market opened for Slovenian dairy producers with granted permits weeks earlier.

The Chinese market is currently open for producers of foodstuffs which require no special permits or agreements for exportation, for example, hops. However, products of animal origin require a permit, something Zidan said both countries were working on to speed up the procedures.

Chen expressed his hope high-quality Chinese agricultural products would be exported to Slovenia, but said more analysis of the Slovenian market had to be made beforehand.

Slovenian dairies Ljubljanske mlekarne, Mlekarna Celeia, Pomurske mlekarne and Mlekarna Planika were issued approval to register as exporters by the Chinese authorities at the beginning of June, the visiting Chinese officials confirmed.

After his talk with the Chinese delegation, Zidan told the press the economic cooperation between the two countries was growing "steadily", using the export of Slovenian hops to China as an example of this year's success story.

"In the first three months, almost a million euros-worth of hops was exported, compared to about 600,000 euros for the whole of 2015," he added.

Earlier on Monday, he co-chaired the first session of an intergovernmental task force for cooperation in agriculture along with agriculture ministry state secretary Tanja Strnisa.

Chen maintained that the cooperation had already proven successful and looked forward to much potential in Slovenia, mostly because the country offered high-quality "green products." Endit