By Loucoumane Coulibaly ABIDJAN (Reuters) - Ivory Coast's pineapple and mango output has tumbled during the country's political crisis and the sector needs 10 billion CFA francs investment to recover, a senior fruit sector official said. Banana output has remained stable, largely due to multinational companies replacing smallholders who have abandoned the crop, Michel Gnui, chairman of Ivory Coast's main fruit producers' organisations, told Reuters in an interview. Ivory Coast, the world's top cocoa grower, is struggling to recover from the effects of a short 2002-2003 war, which has led to a series of peace deals and repeated delays in holding a presidential election meant to reunite the West African nation. "Ivory Coast's fruit industry has been going through some tough times since 2002," Gnui said late on Monday. "Pineapple exports have fallen from 190,341 tonnes in 2002 to 60,303 tonnes in 2008 while mango exports have fallen from 8,218 tonnes in 2002 to 5,915 tonnes in 2008," he added. The simmering crisis, which has left rebels in de facto control of the north of the country, raised shipping costs and made financing inputs like fertilisers more difficult for farmers. As a result, Ivory Coast has been losing out to Latin American competition. "We need at least 10 billion CFA to re-launch the banana and mango sector," Gnui said, adding that output could return to pre-crisis levels by encouraging growers back on to their land and supplying West African, as well as European, markets. Ivory Coast is amongst African nations seeking hundreds of millions of euros in compensation from the European Union, which is seeking to lower taxes on banana imports from Latin America. However, for now, Gnui said Ivory Coast's banana production was holding firm at around 220,000 tonnes, despite the crisis in the country, but the sector was seeing changing dynamics. "The banana sector has not endured the same problems as pineapples. African producers have disappeared from the profession - there were about 2,000 planters in the sector in 2002. Now there are none," he said. French companies like SCB and Canavase, which work in several African countries, have bought up Ivorian farms, developed them and have now got good plantations, he said. | 
