Ecuador dispatched security forces to its main port terminals and some key transportation routes for fruit and cocoa to allow export operations to continue, exporters informed on January 10.

Ecuador is the world's largest exporter of bananas and the third-largest global producer of cocoa, the chocolate-making commodity. The family of President Daniel Noboa has a large banana-exporting business. The country has been rocked this week by violence coming from criminal gangs linked to drug trafficking. Noboa said the Government is at war with the gangs.

Port operations in the main export hubs, such as Guayaquil, Posorja and Manta, continued normally despite the violence in several cities, said the head of the banana exporting group AEBE, Jose Antonio Hidalgo Molina. He added that the group has been working with the Government to create safe corridors for transporting the fruit from the farms to the ports. Some companies operating with agricultural commodities were not fully staffed on Wednesday, said Hugo Francisco Hernandez, a director of a cocoa exporting group called Anecacao. But loadings at ports have yet to be impacted, he said.