I remember I got that performance problem, importing 8.300 records from a csv file using appadmin and remote database ( over 10 min )
Nest IMPROVEMENTS worked for me:
-if local database was fast from appadmin
-if remote database, A- using another DB manager to import csv file,
phpmyadmin, sqlbuddy,etc
B- coping file to remote host and calling
importcsv from code

