Bangladesh exports less potatoes

Bangladesh potato export in the first two quarters until June 2013 fell by 33 per cent compared to the same period of the previous year which is likely to be a setback for the industry as a whole since majority export of the vegetable occurs during this time.

Exporters said they are under a stagnant economic condition because of the transportation problem due to political instability in the current year, resulting in heavy losses and cancellation of orders.

A perishable item such as potato is usually ruined when delays occur in the system of transportation on the highway from Rangpur and other northern districts of the country to Chittagong seaport via Dhaka.

The after-effect is the surplus potato in the market, which will push potato prices to fall in the rest of the year.

The silver-lining, though, will be that next year's procurement will become more attractive as not many growers would be interested to produce potato and the exporters will see more traditional potato farmers making quality produce rather than bumper production, said an exporter.

This shall prove to be the catalyst of setting the potato export market into a more stable scenario, he argued.

The volume of export earning from potato during the first six months of this calendar year was around Tk 400 million against Tk 600 million in the same period of 2012.

Bangladesh exported potato worth Tk 810 million last year which is not likely to match this year, an exporter based in Chittagong said.

Political programmes such as hartals (general strike), road blockades and transport strikes have put the potato exporters in severe delay in getting delivery of the item which caused them financial losses.

"By the end of last February five truck-loads of potato from Sirajganj district could not be exported to our Malaysian buyer as the goods lost quality due to delay caused by road blockade for two days,"said Sheikh M Daniel, an exporter of Mac brand potato.

"We have now initiated a processing plant line near Sitakunda area to save our export from disruption. With the state-of-the-art technology customised to our requirement, we can now pack and process the exportable potato to the tune of about 30 tonnes per hour,"Daniel said.

Installation of this processing plant, procured from Taiwan, is expected to be completed by next December, which will be the first of its kind in the country, he said.

Currently, potato processing is done completely in the manual system.

"We are happy to announce that this processing line has helped us secure the advance booking of export orders for approximately 600 tonnes from Malaysia for the next year. This gives us hope to try to break through the 1,000 tonnes export mark next year,"he said.

There are new emerging potato markets in Sri Lanka, the Maldives and South Africa which he is planning to penetrate.

He said the potato exporters are happy to see that the government has increased the cash subsidy to the potato exporters to 20 per cent from 10 per cent. That shall be instrumental in attracting new entrepreneurs to this lucrative industry and will allow them to be price competitive internationally.

Source: The Financial Express