ISLAMABAD (Commodity Online) : Widespread damages occurred to most of India’s onion crops this season created opportunity for the Pakistani exporters to exploit the situation and earn precious foreign exchange for the country.
Pakistan’s Sindh Province recorded bumper onion harvest this season boosting hopes of revival in export potentials, according to Pak Agriculture ministry.
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India is considered as a major supplier of onion to most countries of the region, however, ruining of the commodity this season due to bad weather conditions prevented it from reaching out to consumers abroad.
Analysts said Pakistan will take full advantage of the situation if the Indian crop failed to reach the international market in time by the mid of December.
Pakistan received export orders of $90 million for onion from regional importers after a gap of 4 to 5 years in the wake of the current bumper onion crop in Sindh.
Pakistan’s onion export had been in disarray for the last several months on account of devastation of the crop by the torrential rains, which played havoc with the standing crop in Balochistan, NWFP and Sindh provinces.
The shortage of the commodity had forced the government to allow import of the commodity from India as the country imported onion worth billions of rupees from July onwards, which largely helped to fulfil the domestic consumers’ requirements.
Singapore, Malaysia, Gulf countries, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh are major importers of the commodity in the region.
Other major feature of the export order was higher onion prices of $250 to $300 per metric tonne boosted by non-availability of the Indian commodity. Previous years the prices remained in the range of $150 to $200 per metric tonne.
Currently every week two ships, each carrying 150 to 200 containers of the commodity are leaving Karachi port for their onward export destinations, while a large quantity weighing thousands of tonnes of the commodity are daily transported by launches and other modes to the Gulf region.
One of the major positive aspects of the local bumper crop was a sharp decline in its rates in the wholesale markets, which currently stands at Pak Rs 10 to Pak Rs 12 per kilogramme as compared with the previous month’s prices of Rs Pak 16 to Pak Rs 18 per kg, which is also likely to provide some financial relief to the domestic consumers.
