Peru's avocado exports up 24.5 percent thanks to boost in Chinese market

Fresh avocados worth 386.6 million U.S. dollars led non-traditional Peruvian agricultural exports in the first eight months, up 24.5 percent year-on-year, Peru's foreign trade bureau ComexPeru said on Saturday.

This rise in exports is linked to a higher demand for avocados around the world, which has caused prices to rise from 1.55 U.S. dollars a kg in January to 2.1 U.S. dollars in August.

Avocado exports received a boost in May 2015, when Peru was granted access to the Chinese market.

According to official reports, Peru exported 12,319 tons of avocados to China in 2015. The figure is expected to rise by 84 percent to 22,764 tons in 2016 and by a further 63 percent to 37,075 tons in 2017.

In its weekly report, ComexPeru said Peru is now the 10th largest exporter of fruits in the world, having exported 2.714 million U.S. dollars worth of fruits from January to August, a year-on-year increase of3.4 percent. Fruits also accounted for 12.4 percent of all Peruvian exports during the period.

In the first eight months of 2016, Peru also became the largest Latin American exporter of mandarins, whose exports in the period totalled 106.8 million U.S. dollars. The country's global exports of cranberries reached 41.3 million U.S. dollars, up 125.6 percent.

Peru still has broad potential to promote its agricultural exports even further, since the United States, the Netherlands and Spain currently account for 53 percent of its non-traditional fruit exports, said ComexPeru. Endi