Government said new agreement marks a new phase in modern, sustainable, and efficient production
The Panamanian government has release details of its recently signed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Chiquita Panama, paving the way for the multinational to restart its operations in Bocas del Toro.
Announcing the agreement, President José Raúl Molino said it would modernise and expand the region’s banana sector, generating up to 5,000 jobs.
Chiquita will return to Panama to operate under a sharecropping model – an arrangement whereby a tenant, or sharecropper, uses a landowner’s land to grow crops in exchange for a portion of the harvest. “Chiquita will continue to operate, purchasing fruit and exporting from there,” said the Minister of Commerce and Industry, Julio Moltó.
Chiquita has committed to purchasing the fruit and will support farmers by providing technical supervision, quality control, transportation and marketing services.
Under the terms of the MoU, Chiquita agreed to hire some 3,000 workers by the end of 2025 for land clearing and agricultural recovery, plus an additional 2,000 people next year to handle harvesting and packing. It will invest US$30mn to resume production and exports of the product.
The agreement includes the establishment of a technical committee to monitor compliance with the commitments set out under the MoU and prevent the recurrence of previous problems which led to the multinational shutting down its operation earlier this year.
Despite the strikes and labour disputes of previous months, bananas remained Panama’s leading export this year, accounting for almost 12 per cent of total exports.
