Countries in the Asia/Pacific region continue to tighten their stranglehold on expanding tropical fruit markets in the United States and the European Community, even as the fruit industry in the Caribbean continues to show few signs of making any significant impact on the region’s agricultural exports.
The major tropical fruit producers in the Asia/Pacific region including China and Thailand have had a considerable head start on Caribbean Community (Caricom) countries in the tropical fruit sub-sector. However, the region has shown few signs of better positioning itself to compete more effectively for a bigger share of the global market.
Global demand for tropical fruit is continually on the rise; world production was expected to reach 62 million tonnes by 2010, an increase of 15.4 million tonnes and to grow even further this
