By Atuna
Ecuadorian exports of tuna to Venezuela have almost tripled in less than two years. Until September of 2009, numbers reached 15.062 M/T; quite a hike from 5.240 M/T in 2007.
Exports of the goods has jumped from 2007 to 2008 and it’s showing to be an ongoing tendency.
Some serious accusations have been made stating that Ecuador overprices tuna exported of "third quality" to Venezuela using the preferential dollar system through The International Bank of Ecuador: “A poor quality canned tuna, is sent to Venezuela as a premium product to benefit from preferential dollars, to the detriment of our people. The value of each can is $ 0.20 and sell to Venezuela at $ 2.50. That is, there is a sustained fraud causing great detriment to social programsâ€, stated the upset author of the article “Latas de atún, el Banco Internacional y los dólares preferencialesâ€
No evidence, however, has been found to prove this theory. It is well-know though that Venezuela used to be an active tuna fishing nation and currently operates 21 vessels at the IATTC convention area and 26 at the ICCAT area.
The article states that the International Bank of Ecuador use the ALADI partnership, established in 1980 between Central Banks of 12 Latin American countries, including Ecuador and Venezuela, to facilitate the trade between participating nations.
Ecuador exported US 39.908 million of canned tuna to Venezuela in 2007, 122% higher than 2007 numbers - USD 17.941 million.
