According to the portal Eastfruit, Pakistani potato growers have begun harvesting potatoes for the new winter harvest. Syed Muzzammil Shah of Syed Trade Group, a fresh fruit and vegetable exporting company, said this year's winter potato harvest began a month earlier. Usually, farmers start harvesting potatoes in January.
The company is currently actively looking for buyers for the first shipments of potatoes in Belarus and Russia. Due to the climatic conditions of Pakistan, potatoes are harvested here twice a year - in January and in April-May. This year, Uzbekistan has unexpectedly become the largest market for potatoes from this country. He imported over 400 thousand tons of potatoes from Pakistan.
A Pakistani trader says that prices for sea freight in containers have jumped more than 2,5-3,0 times over the year, from $ 3000 to $ 4000 to $ 7500- $ 9000 for a 40 'container. Accordingly, only the cost of delivery of potatoes to Russia will reach 29-33 US cents, and the price of potatoes in the Russian Federation at the moment, according to price monitoring Eastfruit, is about $ 0,38 per kg. At the same time, for Pakistan, Russia, Belarus and Uzbekistan were not previously priority sales markets for potatoes, because the country mainly exports potatoes to Asia and the Middle East.
Over the past six weeks, prices for potatoes in Russia have decreased by 15%. In Belarus, potato prices have been stable and are currently on average 2 US cents per kg lower than in Russia.
In Uzbekistan, the price reduction in two weeks was about 10%. At the same time, the price of potatoes in the country remains the highest in the region and reaches $ 0,46 per kg for small-scale wholesale lots.
The lowest wholesale prices for potatoes are currently in Ukraine. Here, wholesale potatoes are sold at $ 0,17 per kg, i.e. almost three times cheaper than in Uzbekistan and two times cheaper than in Belarus and Russia. True, there are regulatory problems with the access of Ukrainian potatoes to the Russian market, which does not allow raising prices for it.
Pakistan is one of the largest exporters of potatoes. The annual export of tubers from the country reaches almost 700 thousand tons. However, the main markets for potatoes for Pakistan are usually the UAE, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Qatar, Malaysia and Oman. Recently, in connection with the events in Afghanistan, the demand for Pakistani potatoes in this country has fallen sharply, which allows Pakistan to supply the freed volumes to the countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia.