According to EastFruit analysts, the Tajik wholesale market is overwhelmed with new harvest onions, which are still poorly traded. The situation is aggravated by the fact that the 2020 harvest onions are still on the market in very large quantities. Vegetable growers are actively searching for buyers, but there are practically none.
Therefore, farmers in the southern regions of Tajikistan already offer new harvest onions at 7 US cents per kg, while prices for last year’s onions have dropped to 5 US cents per kg.
According to Bakhtiyor Abduvokhidov, international consultant at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), several reasons led to such a low price level for onions in Tajikistan.
“The exports of Tajik onions usually start a little later – in May. Therefore, traders did not expect an increase in the supply of onions from Tajikistan so early. The second problem is that many farmers do not have enough big enough batches of onions yet, and buyers fear that there will be problems with their transportation. Therefore, they prefer to wait until the onion matures a bit longer and dries up. Also, Muslims now have the holy month of Ramadan, so trading activity has decreased. The fourth problem is that the onion area in Tajikistan has expanded greatly, so the supply is higher than usual. Finally, there are now a lot of cheap onions in Russia, where almost all Tajik onions are normally exported. There are a lot of cheap onions now in Kazakhstan, which is also a major onion exporter to the Russian Federation and an important transit hub for onions from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan,” the FAO expert says.
Thus, we encourage onion importers and exporters to use our EF Trade Platform and indicate prices for onions in their offers to boost trade and reduce losses.
A detailed analysis of the situation on the onion market and the prospects for onion pricing in the new season in Uzbekistan, Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Tajikistan, Belarus and the EU countries are described in the market analysis of EastFruit – it will help to build a strategy for the new season.
As for the prospects for onion pricing in the coming weeks, market participants consider possible a growth in trade and exports of onions, given the cold spring in Ukraine and Russia and serious delays in the new harvest for onions there. However, a sharp rise in the price of onion in Tajikistan is not yet expected.
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