According to the EastFruit price monitoring, wholesale prices for potatoes of the 2021 harvest in Moldova have been in the range of 2-3 MDL/kg ($0.11-0.17/kg) for the third week already. In dollars, this is the lowest potato price on the Moldovan market over the past three years.
Moreover, since summer, the potato price in Moldova is the lowest among the countries monitored. Meanwhile, in the last two weeks, the growing trend in wholesale prices for potatoes expands to more and more countries – Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan. Will it spread to Moldova as well?
According to the participants in the Moldovan produce market, it is possible, but unlikely to happen in the near future. On one hand, some traders claim that in early September they started shipping potatoes to buyers in Romania. Since mid-September, these and other Moldovan traders have been exporting potatoes to Belarus (assuming that Russia becomes the final destination). Moreover, supplies to the Belarusian market amount to many hundreds, and possibly even thousands of tons. Intensive export should in future convert into a rise in potato prices on the domestic market of Moldova – country that used to be a large importer of potatoes for many years and where the total area planted with potatoes has not grown this year.
Read also: Domino effect: potatoe prices are now rising in Uzbekistan and could increase more!
According to the heads of some farms, they have been selling high-quality potatoes for a week on the domestic market for current consumption and, in some cases, for storage, at 4 MDL/kg ($0.22/kg).
On the other hand, according to potato growers, the peak harvest of potatoes this year is slower than last year due to weather conditions. Some large farms have not even started harvesting yet. Moreover, potatoes of low and average quality dominate in new harvest; farmers sell them immediately after harvesting, preferably from the field. As a result, the supply of potatoes of the above quality is now high and, apparently, will remain so until the end of autumn – the beginning of winter. Obviously, this is not the best context for raising the average wholesale prices for local potatoes, except for high-quality ones, as well as for expensive imports.
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