“Agricultural exports are down 40% compared to the same period last year due to the shipping crisis in the Red Sea,” according to Mounir El-Tini, Vice President of the Zahleh and Bekaa Chamber of Commerce. He pointed out that citrus fruits are the hardest hit, in addition to the leftovers from the apple and potato seasons.
He also pointed out in a press release that some traders are resorting to “roundabout” export methods: they export products with Jordan as their destination. In Jordan, they change the origin to Syrian. In this way, Lebanese products are channeled into Saudi Arabia, in Jordanian cars, as Syrian goods.
“This method costs exporters 10,000 dollars per trailer, instead of 2,000 to 2,500 dollars previously,” he adds.
Al-Tini pointed out that “these backdoor methods are costly because traders pay 400% more than freight to deliver their products to the Saudi market.” He added that this high cost results in a loss of $7,500 per refrigerator of agricultural products for the Lebanese economy. “This is not a negligible figure, because if we consider the number of refrigerators that leave the country every day, i.e. around 50, the losses amount to $375,000 per day,” he points out.
He also pointed out that “the cost of exporting in containers has risen by $1,400 compared with before the crisis,” pointing out that “not all agricultural products can be exported in containers.”
Al-Tini stressed that “the Red Sea shipping crisis is causing very significant losses, but the real source of losses remains the closure of Saudi markets to Lebanese products.”
