According to EastFruit analysts, prices for new onions in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan are shockingly low to local vegetable growers. For the once expensive early vegetable crop, wholesalers pay a meager 10-12 US cents per kg. And this is for a high-quality, sorted and packaged product. Farmers receive even less money for onions shipped from the farm. In other words, you can now buy a whole tonne of onions of the 2024 harvest at the wholesale market for just US $100.
Let us note that in Tajikistan prices are lower than in Uzbekistan as this country, for some unknown reason, introduced an informal ban on exports of onions and carrots back in February 2024. There is no information yet about lifting the ban.
It is not surprising that prices for new crop onions are now at record lows. A year earlier at the same time, farmers received three times as much money for a kg of onions sold, and in 2022 at the same time – 2.2 times more.
Interestingly, wholesale prices for onions of the 2023 harvest in Uzbekistan are now higher than for early onions of the new harvest. At the same time, prices for last year’s onions remain at a stable level, while early onions from the new harvest continue to become cheaper.
In Tajikistan, on the contrary, prices for early onions are slightly higher than for the last year’s onions. However, “old” onions are so cheap that they no longer decrease in price, but the early “new” onions continue to get cheaper.
According to our preliminary estimates, the harvest of early onions in both Uzbekistan and Tajikistan will be relatively high, which does not give hope for a significant increase in prices in the coming weeks. Some recovery in exports, which market participants expect in mid-May, could help stabilize onion prices in Central Asian countries. However, we obviously shouldn’t expect a repetition of the price levels of the previous two seasons.
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