Brussels, Feb 27 - European Union countries imported 4.185 million tonnes of bananas in 2006, up by 12.3 percent on 2005, European Commission data showed on Tuesday.
The largest year-on-year rise in imports, at 18.6 percent, came from the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) country group -- particularly from Jamaica and Ghana, where exports rose by 173 and 478 percent respectively, the data showed.
Cameroon and Ivory Coast retained their position as the EU's main ACP banana suppliers to the European Union, which is their almost exclusive outlet, and accounted for around 53 percent of the group's combined exports to the bloc last year.
Both countries have seen their EU exports increase sharply in recent years, usually at the expense of lower-yielding fruit plantations in Caribbean ACP states like the Windward Islands.
Latin America, the EU's other main supplier group, saw its European exports rise by 10.7 percent last year.
Ecuador, the world's largest banana exporter, remained Europe's single largest supplier of the fruit and shipped 1.024 million tonnes of bananas to EU markets in 2006, down by 3.6 percent from the previous year.
Guatemala took a far larger share of Latin America's banana shipments in 2006, up by a massive 811 percent from 2005. Peru and Brazil also exported significantly more bananas to EU markets, with exports up by 95 and 50 percent respectively.
Latin America, known as the "dollar zone", is the EU's largest supplier with some 70 percent of the market, selling below the cost of EU-grown fruit. The top suppliers are Ecuador, Costa Rica, Colombia and Panama.
The EU is the world's largest importer of bananas and the only major managed market in the international banana trade. The EU relies on local growers for around a fifth -- or less -- of its banana needs, so the rest must be imported. Nearly all of the local production comes from Spain's Canary Islands and the French overseas territories of Martinique and Guadeloupe.
EU countries produced 641,754 tonnes of bananas in 2006, just 13 percent of overall EU supply. Output was down by 1.0 percent from the previous year.
Portugal grows bananas, in the Algarve, Azores and Madeira. Greece and Cyprus are also very small producers of the fruit.
The EU's largest single banana producer is Martinique, followed by the Canary Islands and then Guadeloupe -- although Canary Island plantations have by far the highest yields.