On the Pacific coast of Honduras, thousands of people working in the shrimp farming industry are worried about their futures after their government broke diplomatic ties with their largest export market: Taiwan.
“We don’t want them to stop business with Taiwan,” said Lorena de Jesus Zelaya, 51, who works in a shrimp packing plant.
Alongside 800 other women, she works in a warehouse in Choluteca, about 85km south of the capital, Tegucigalpa, where frozen shrimp is packaged and sent in refrigerated containers to Taiwan, Mexico and Europe.
Photo: AFP
Wearing a hat, apron and rubber shoes, Zelaya said she has worked in the shrimp industry for 31 years.
Honduran President Xiomara Castro announced last month that she was breaking off diplomatic relations with Taiwan to establish ties with China instead.
Shrimp workers fear that move could jeopardize the free-trade agreement between Honduras and Taiwan, signed in 2008, on which their livelihoods largely depend.
“For Honduras, as a shrimp producer, losing the Taiwanese market is a very difficult situation in terms of price levels,” 46-year-old businessman Yader Rodriguez said. “Taiwan is a high-value market where our shrimp can sell at almost twice the price of the Chinese market.”
Although the Chinese economy is 12 times larger than Taiwan’s, “we’re very worried about what this political decision will bring,” he added.
Shrimp exports are worth about US$100 million per year, Rodriguez said.
Beijing refuses to have diplomatic relations with countries that recognize Taipei.
Castro’s move followed several other Latin American countries in recent years, including Nicaragua, El Salvador, Panama and the Dominican Republic.
It leaves Taiwan with only 13 UN-recognized diplomatic allies, including Guatemala and Belize, which President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) visited last week.
The shrimp are farmed in huge artificial ponds using seawater from the nearby Gulf of Fonseca.
Since it launched in the 1970s, shrimp farming exploded in Honduras, with 324 farms covering an area of 24,500 hectares.
About 23,000 people are employed in the industry, but that figure rises to 150,000 when including those indirectly dependent on shrimp farming.
The National Aquaculturists Association of Honduras (ANDAH) has expressed its concerns in several meetings with authorities.
Taiwan could simply refuse to buy shrimp from the Central American nation, it said, adding that it has asked the government to request that Taiwan continues its trade relations despite the diplomatic rupture.
“The government is open to listening and looking for solutions,” said ANDAH president Juan Carlos Javier, adding that more than one-third of shrimp export revenue last year came from Taiwan.
While the government has said nothing about its trade agreement with Taiwan, many people are deeply concerned about the ramifications of ending diplomatic cooperation.
“All the families are worried ... about this [trade] agreement they want to break,” said Carlos Abrego, 28, who works for a shrimp company.
“We really are very worried because here where we live, it’s very serious to lose your job or to take a pay cut,” 34-year-old worker Pedro Antonio Martinez said.
Shrimp is the fifth-largest export for Honduras after coffee, bananas, sugar and palm oil.
Last year, the country’s exports were worth US$6.1 billion, with US$130 million of that coming from Taiwan.
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