Japan has agreed to lift its two-decade-old ban on the import of Indian mangoes, says a media release issued by the Press Information Bureau. Japan's Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Shoichi Nakagawa, made this announcement in the presence of Kamal Nath, India's Minister of Commerce and Industry, in Tokyo at the recent India-Japan Business Summit.

Kamal Nath, who had pursued the matter with the Japanese authorities persistently so as to secure market access for Indian mangoes in Japan, announced that once the embargo was lifted, the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA) would organise a mango festival in Japan in July. It will coincide with the ban on the import of Indian mangoes being formally lifted by Japan next month. The decision will benefit mango growers in Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.

It was in 1986 that Japan imposed the ban because of suspected pest infestation by fruit flies. Scientific evidence collected with the help of large-scale tests conducted across the country revealed that Indian mangoes were indeed free from fruit flies. Indian authorities had provided the test data to their Japanese counterparts as far back as 1998 and 1999. The Japanese authorities then insisted on vapour heat treatment before imports were allowed into Japan. This requirement, too, was complied with, but the ban remained because the Japanese authorities raised fears about a new fruit fly strain. This led the Indian authorities commission a survey and data collected for three years established there was no fruit fly infestation. Despite these efforts, the ban wasn't lifted.

Kamal Nath first took up the issue of market access for Indian mangoes with Nakagawa in August 2004 and subsequently during his visit to Tokyo in 2005, when he invited the Japanese quarantine authorities to visit India for on-site tests and inspections. A Japanese technical team visited India earlier this year and returned home satisfied with the results. It agreed to move ahead with the process to lift the ban, thus setting the stage for lifting the 20-year-old ban.