Economy & Business - December 2011 (ISSN 1741-7430)

On 5 December the government of President Rafael Correa changed the system for setting minimum prices for banana producers. Ecuador is the world’s biggest banana exporter and bananas account for 30% of the country’s annual export receipts. Unusually, almost half of Ecuador’s bananas now go to secondary markets (ie not the European Union nor the US).  Ecuador’s biggest markets are the Baltic countries (24% of total exports), Russia (22%), the US (17%) and the Mediterranean (14%).