Unscrupulous wholesalers have flooded the domestic market with cheap foreign vegetables in a bid to cause a drastic drop in the price of local produce, according to the Cameron Highlands Indian Farmers Association.
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More than 2,000 farmers in the Cameron Highlands region are now struggling to compete in a market dominated by cheaper Thai and Indonesian goods. More than 1,000 tonnes of vegetables had to be dumped last month alone, causing a loss of RH10m.
P. Viswanathan, president of the association, revealed that wholesalers have been importing far more than their permitted monthly quotas with the help of contacts on the country’s borders. He said that the association uncovered the plan to undermine and destabilise the domestic market after obtaining information from a vegetable wholesaler in the Selayang market in Kuala Lumpur.
The association has called on the government to implement a number of measures to stabilise the market again. In the short term, these include establishing cold rooms to store excess supplies of fruit and vegetables and auctions to sell stocks off with overhead costs for farmers, restricting imports with consultation from farmers, and offering vegetable farms the same 50% subsidiary received by the rubber and palm oil industries.
There has also been a call for increased education for farmers, for the government to teach the local producers the marketing skills necessary to take their goods direct to the consumer.
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By GlobalData
