For several weeks, bananas have been rare on market stalls. Producers are still suffering the consequences of Cyclone Bélal and prices are inevitably soaring. We will have to wait until the end of the year to hope for a return to normal.
Consumers in Reunion have been able to see this for several weeks. Bazardiers and fruit and vegetable shops are offering fewer and fewer bananas for sale. And when they are available on market stalls, they sell at high prices.
“I sell them at 6.99 euros per kilo. It’s complicated to find them and when they are offered, the bananas don’t stay on the shelves for long.“, entrusts Henri Joël Saminadin, manager of a business in the south of the island.
Watch the report from Réunion La 1ère:
Bananas have been scarce on market stalls for several weeks, and prices are inevitably soaring
•
©Reunion the 1st
No choice to increase prices. “With certain suppliers, the checkout is 70 euros instead of 15 to 20 euros in high season“, explains our interlocutor. If professionals in the sector have had difficulty obtaining supplies, it is due to low production which can be explained by the passage of cyclone Bélal last January.
The farms barely resisted the strong wind and torrential rains. When the banana trees end up on the ground, the bananas soon turn black, attacked by a fungus, and they quickly become practically unsaleable.
The situation is not expected to improve before next November. It takes between 8 and 9 months to obtain a bunch of bananas and the banana plantations are currently only budding. We will still have to wait until December to find bananas at an average price of 1.50 euros per kilo.
In Reunion, between 8,000 and 9,000 tonnes of bananas are sold on average on the market each year.
