Horticultural produce exporters paid an estimated $235 million in tariffs to importing countries last year -- an increase of 19 percent on the 2008 figure of $197m -- even though their export earnings rose by only 8 percent.The industry's 2010 "trade
Horticultural produce exporters paid an estimated $235 million in tariffs to importing countries last year -- an increase of 19 percent on the 2008 figure of $197m -- even though their export earnings rose by only 8 percent.
The industry's 2010 "trade barriers" report released today showed tariffs imposed by other countries on New Zealand fruit and vegetables cost growers on average $34,000 each, up $6000 on 2008.
The report, commissioned by the Horticulture Export Authority (HEA) and Horticulture New Zealand (HortNZ) every two years, is used by the industry and government agencies for monitoring and negotiating international trade access and helping exporters to develop new markets.
About 60 percent of the nation's fruit and vegetables are exported, earning just under $2.2 billion.
"As we sell more products overseas, we pay more tariffs, and that's why we need to continue our efforts on signing free trade agreements," HortNZ chief executive Peter Silcock said.
The value of exports to China has more than tripled from $20m to $75m over the past two years -- largely due to a big jump in kiwifruit exports. Chinese tariffs on kiwifruit were cut from 20 percent to 13 percent by the Free Trade Agreement between the two countries.
Mr Silcock said the latest report highlighted the continuation of a disturbing trend: the increasing use by other countries of non-tariff trade barriers, known as "SPS" - sanitary and phytosanitary barriers.
Some pipfruit orchardists have alleged that this was the motivation behind Australian use of fireblight -- a bacterial disease which is not transmitted on clean, ripe fruit -- to keep New Zealand apples from entering its domestic market.
"These are the types of barriers that have kept our products out of other countries in the past because they are based on supposedly scientific product health concerns," HEA chief executive Simon Hegarty said.
The latest report did not calculate the additional costs to growers of SPS compliance, "but we know the industry is paying more to conform to export certification regimes put in place by importing countries as protection for their own growing environments".
Other costs faced by exporters included compliance with non-SPS technical barriers, such as quotas, grade standards and labelling rules, "often driven by politics at the expense of sound science", Mr Hegarty said.
The industry's four biggest markets for NZ produce were the European Union (worth $603m), Japan ($445m), Australia ($337m) and the USA ($126m).
Taiwan ($105m) has replaced South Korea in fifth place, and the report said this was likely due to Korea's very high tariffs constraining growth. Korea applies an average tariff rate of almost 41 percent, meaning New Zealand paid $34m in tariffs for just this market.
The average tariff on all horticultural exports to all major markets was estimated to be 6.83 percent of exports by FOB (free on board) value, a slight increase on the 6.49 percent reported in 2008.
