Samoa's Prime Minister has called the resurgence in the country's banana exports as "nothing short of miraculous".
During his New Year message, Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi said that more than 50 years since Samoa's banana exports dried up they started again to New Zealand with requests for bananas being received from Fiji and Tonga.
Tuilaepa said the Ministry of Agriculture had acquired a new banana species from South Africa and given priority to big, commercial farms to grow it.
He noted there had now been three shipments of the so called Jewish Bananas to New Zealand that had sold out on arrival.
He said the success of the crop had inspired the ministry to push for land to be freed up for farmers to increase production.
