A lot of alternatives to China for garlic, ginger
Bangladesh could import garlic from Malaysia and Egypt as an alternative to China, where in fact the outbreak of a lethal, pneumonia-like virus named coronavirus has resulted in a breakdown in the supply chain of the spice.
The country is also considering India, Pakistan and Indonesia alternatively sources for another key cooking ingredient, ginger, according to a Bangladesh Tariff Commission (BTC) report recently obtained from the commerce ministry.
This recommendation comes at the same time when the disruption in the supply chain for spices imported from China has resulted in increased prices for garlic and ginger in the domestic market for the past month.
The purchase price for garlic, an essential cooking ingredient, increased by 44 % to Tk 180-210 per kilogram in Dhaka as of yesterday, according to market price data published by the Trading Corporation of Bangladesh.
Retail prices for ginger shot up 8 % from what it was a month ago to Tk 100-180 per kilogram.
The BTC report, which was recently submitted to the commerce ministry, said that Bangladesh is heavily reliant on Chinese imports for both spices to meet up the country's gross annual requirements.
The united states consumes six lakh tonnes of garlic and three lakh tonnes of ginger each year.
The import data for garlic and ginger revealed that China makes up about 96 % of the 52,500 tonnes of garlic imported during the July-December amount of the fiscal year.
The remainder was imported from India and Myanmar.
Private importers brought 69,500 tonnes of ginger to the united states during the first-half of fiscal 2019-20.
China supplied 41 per cent of this total, while India provided 28 % and Myanmar 21 %. The remaining 3 % came from other areas of the world, the BTC said.
The report also stated that China is the biggest exporter of both garlic and ginger.
China accounts for 38 % of the world's total supply of ginger and 67 % of the total way to obtain garlic. India and Germany are two other major exporters of ginger.
In the case of garlic, Spain and Argentina are the second and third biggest suppliers respectively, said the report.
However, since Malaysia and Egypt, two other major garlic producers, are nearest to Bangladesh geographically weighed against Spain and Argentina, the united states could consider importing the ingredient from there instead of China.
Bangladesh may possibly also import ginger from India, Vietnam and Pakistan on similar grounds, the BTC added.
An estimate on the production of garlic and ginger from the agriculture ministry implies that Bangladesh's import dependence for ginger is 42 % and for garlic it really is 13 per cent.
One of the factors behind the shortage in local supply is a portion of the products always get damaged while in storage, the report said.
In today's fiscal year, farmers cultivated 8 per cent more garlic to 85,700 hectares than fiscal 2018-19, in line with the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE).
About 6.10 lakh tonnes of garlic was produced in fiscal 2018-19, down 11 % from the prior year.
Domestic production of ginger declined 10 % year to 15,300 hectares from the previous fiscal year.
Farmers harvested 1.90 lakh tonnes of ginger during fiscal 2018-19, down 15 % from the previous period, according to DAE estimates.
