Chile's dehydrated plum enters India

A few months ago, at the 10th Dry Plums EXPO, Pedro Pablo Díaz, the president of Chileprunes stresse…

A few months ago, at the 10th Dry Plums EXPO, Pedro Pablo Díaz, the president of Chileprunes stressed that one of the sector's greatest strategic objectives was to export to the giant Indian market.

After an arduous public-private work, this objective finally sees the light and becomes official: Chile's tenderized dehydrated plum will be able to enter that country, a market of more than 1.4 billion inhabitants.

The entry was formalized by a letter that the Department of Agriculture and Farmers' Welfare of India (DA&FW) sent to that country's Directorate of Plant Protection, Quarantine & Storage (DPPQ&S) informing it that Chilean tenderized plums are considered a processed item and, therefore, do not need plant quarantine authorization (i.e. no phytosanitary certificate is required). The Chilean SAG was then formally notified and on Monday, August 17, the official documents issued by the authorities were available.

A long process
This goal was achieved after a process that lasted more than 5 years, and that was very intense in the last 12 months.

It was a joint public-private, multidisciplinary work, that involved various meetings between Chileprunes, the SAG, and Odepa. A key moment of this process was the trip to India in June, together with ProChile and Sofofa. It was then that the different parties learned that the dehydrated plum was only missing some administrative details to be allowed into India.

On that trip, Pedro Pablo Díaz met with Ranjit Singh, the director of India's Department of Agriculture, Cooperation and Farmers Welfare; and with Juan Angulo, Chilean ambassador to that country, who provided unrestricted support to this cause, along with Priyam Arora, senior Agricultural Assistant of the Chilean embassy in India, and Marcela Zúñiga, commercial attaché in that country.

"We're very happy to be able to achieve this goal that leaves Chile and its dehydrated plum in the top of mind of international consumers. We have no doubt that in the coming years India's market will be as powerful as the markets of Central Europe, Eastern Europe, and Asia," the president of Chileprunes stated.