Nipah outbreak fallout: Bahrain, UAE ban fruit, vegetables from Kerala

The gulf region is India's largest overseas market for fruit exports

Countries from West Asia, including Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), have now restricted the import of fresh fruits and vegetables from Kerala where the Nipah virus epidemic currently shows no sign of abatement killing 15 people till now.

The deadly brain damaging virus is contagious and currently has no vaccine for humans or animals. The natural host of the virus is a fruit bat of the Pteropodidae family, according to the World Health Organization. As a result, major nations, which import India’s fruits and vegetables, are now wary of the produce.

In a letter to the agriculture ministry, the government of Bahrain had last week informed India that it was imposing a temporary ban on fruits and vegetables imports from Kerala region, starting from May 23 onwards, until further notice. Business Standard has also learnt from senior sources that the federal Customs authority of the UAE has followed suit with a similar order on Monday.

“We ask you to take all necessary measures to ensure that no phytosanitary certificates for fruits and vegetables originated in Kerala region shall be issued to the Kingdom of Bahrain. Any consignment from Kerala region shall be re-exported or destroyed,” the letter from Bahrain, reviewed by Business Standard, said.

Ali Shaaban Balah, acting chief of plant protection & quarantine section at the Ministry of Works, Municipalities and Urban Planning in the Government of Bahrain told Business Standard that the move was necessitated by the dangerous nature of the virus and its propensity to spread quickly. “Right now, it is difficult for Customs inspections at ports to find out whether any consignment is infected since the foods do not show any physical signs,” he said. Balah added that other Indian states may come under the restriction if the virus spreads.

The Gulf region is India’s largest market for fruits, with the UAE being the biggest importing nation. The country bought more than $326 million worth of fruits in the first 11 months of the last financial year, according to the commerce ministry data. 

Source: Ministry of Commerce and Industry

While the figures for neighbouring Bahrain were $13 million, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia imported more than $148 million of the produce. India’s overall fruit exports stood at $1.61 billion in the April-February period of 2017-18. This was lower than the $1.73 billion worth of fruit exported from the country in 2016-17. The government is currently in the process of finalising the draft agriculture export policy which aims for a stable export policy regime for farm products and streamlining of the current regulations as part of the changes to double agri export to $60 billion by 2022.

A prominent member of the bat species, the Greater Indian Fruit Bat inhabits large patches of the South Asian subcontinent and may transfer the disease to humans when they consume fruit on trees. Unfortunately for exporters, the bats are ‘generalist’ feeders, eating any fruit they can potentially find, according to a research paper by the Research Center for Biological Sciences in Madurai.

Fruit bats have a serious taste for all types of fruit ranging from bananas to mangoes, dates, avocados, wild dates and any type of pulpy fruit. For India, in the fruit segment, cashewnuts are the largest foreign exchange earner, with $856 million worth of exports in the last financial year. Unfortunately, the cashew industry is based out of Kerala itself, with Kollam in the southern part of the state called the cashew capital of the world. India also exported $230 million worth of fresh or dried grapes last year. However, the third-largest item of exports - mangoes - is the most vulnerable since the fruit is apparently a favourite with the bat. India is the largest exporter of mangoes in the world, commanding more than 40 per cent of the global production.