Taichung sends a container with ponkan honey oranges and pineapple sugar apples on its way to Singapore. Taichung sends a container with ponkan honey oranges and pineapple sugar apples on its way to Singapore. (CNA photo)
TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Taiwan is making up for a Chinese ban on its pineapple sugar apples imposed last year by exporting more of them as well as ponkan (Chinese honey oranges) to Singapore ahead of the Lunar New Year, reports said Wednesday (Jan. 5).
The Farmers Association in Dongshi, Taichung City, sent a container filled with 14 metric tons of ponkan and 2 metric tons of pineapple sugar apples from Taitung County to Singapore on Wednesday, CNA reported.
Taiwan’s agricultural exports used to be overly reliant on the Chinese market, with 84.4% heading across the Taiwan Strait, but due to the ban and the development of new markets, that number has dropped to 42.3% for January to November last year, the Council of Agriculture (COA) said.
Singapore has already proven to be a lucrative market, as demonstrated by a previous shipment of 4.5 metric tons of pineapple sugar apples that were sold out within days, according to the COA. The Southeast Asian country was also the largest market for Taiwan’s ponkan, a fruit harvested from October until the Lunar New Year period.
s_y_s_t_e_m_i_c_ on January 6th, 2022 at 08:25 UTC »
I got excited when I read "pineapple sugar apples" thinking that was one, new kind of fruit.
oeif76kici on January 6th, 2022 at 06:55 UTC »
It's remarkable how Taiwan can do inconsequential trade gestures, and this sub will upvote it like crazy. It's great value for money from a PR perspective.
They sent 1 singular container of fruit to Singapore. For comparison, the Ever Given carries 20,000 containers.
That's 16 tons of fruit. In comparison, in 2019 Singapore's fruit imports included 169,000 tons from Malaysia, 43,100 tons from China, 41,100 tons from Singapore, 34,300 tons from South Africa, and others to total 496k tons.
This is a story about a fairly pointless symbolic gesture, and the actual volume of the shipment represents 0.003% of Singapore's annual fruit imports.
greatestmofo on January 6th, 2022 at 04:12 UTC »
Singapore population: 5.68 million (of which 2.96 million are ethnic Chinese)
China population: 1.402 billion (virtually everyone there celebrates CNY)
I'm not sure that's a great replacement. The article doesn't mention how many metric tonnes were lost in the China ban, nor does it point out how much market share Singapore has helped Taiwan recover.
Note: This is just an assessment. No political opinions held.