MELAKA, July 6 — Exporting fresh durians to China, which is expected to commence in September, will not affect the market and increase in the price of the fruit in the local market.

Federal Agricultural Marketing Authority (Fama) director-general Abdul Rashid Bahri said this is because the durians are specifically (exported) for the China market and those selected only involve cloned durian varieties such as ‘Musang King’, ‘IOI’ or ‘Duri Hitam’ (Black Thorn) and depend on demand from China.

"We guarantee that durian prices will not be expensive because for the local market, residents still have options (varieties) including ‘durian kampung’. Besides, the durian season this time around is quite long, which means we expect plentiful fruit until (this) September,” he told reporters after officiating the ‘Program Kendurian@Jualan Agro Madani’ at Pasaraya Aeon Bandaraya Melaka here today.

"So there will be affordable durians in the local market and there may be slight price increases because there are costs that durian sellers have to bear.”

Elaborating further, he said that the first export of fresh durians to China will use the air or sea route, and (export) also depends on the availability of supply as well as demand from the country.

"If we ship the consignment, we estimate to deliver about 10 or 20 tonnes while for air transportation, which is quite limited, we expect to deliver one tonne (of fruits) or 5,000 fruits,” he said.

He also said that so far around 70 packing centres are being audited by the Agriculture and Food Security Ministry, in addition to more than 200 durian farms that comply with Good Agricultural Practices standards, applying for the auditing process to qualify their fruits for export.

In other developments, Abdul Rashid added that the achievement of the Madani Agro Sales, organised in 3,655 locations this year until June 30, recorded a sales value of RM77.1 million involving about 47,125 local entrepreneurs and brought savings of approximately RM23.1 million to customers. — Bernama