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Ammon News - AMMAN (Petra) – Farmers, produce merchants and exporters on Saturday appealed for intervention by agriculture and transport officials to rescue the farming season, which, they said, is facing "total collapse" due to a fall in prices.

Ahmad Yassin, president of the Jordan Exporters and Producers Association for Fruits and Vegetables, attributed the sharp fall in prices to a shortage in refrigerated trucks to haul farm produce to neighbouring countries, bringing exports to a halt that glutted the local market and brought prices down.

He told Petra that the reason behind a shortage in refrigerated trucks was Saudi Arabia's failure to issue entry visas to truckers, many of whom are Syrian nationals, exacerbated by the use of Jordanian trailer trucks by Egypt and other countries to transport non-Jordanian products to neighbouring countries.

Yassin suggested, as a solution, allowing entry to Jordan by empty non-Jordanian refrigerated trucks to load Jordanian produce, abolish customs tariffs on trucks that carry Jordanian cargo and ban empty Jordanian trucks from departure to load non-Jordanian cargo.

Yassin's deputy, Mahmoud Qattil, said refrigerated truck fares had more than doubled due to a sharp in their numbers, as cargo trucks become increasingly unavailable. He appealed to the transport ministry to intercede with the Saudi embassy to solve the trucking problem and help local farmers.