While Honduras continues to look for market opportunities in Asia and South America, one executive has attributed the poor results to a lack of free trade deals with Central America and Europe.

Vice President of the Tela Railroad Company, Fernando Sánchez, claims that while countries like Costa Rica and Panama ship 1.1 million metric tons (MT) and 300 million MT respectively each year, Honduras only exports about 50,000 MT.

“It’s really not worth it for us,” Sánchez stated.

The executive criticized the government for not taking an active role in negotiating trade deals with potential markets, such as Costa Rica and Panama have done.

He said the lack of progress could be seen in the fact that Honduras has only exported around 11.5 million cartons of the fruit in recent years.

Last year, transnational Standard Fruit announced the closure of 13 banana farms in Honduras’ Coyoles Central zone.