Information for fruit and vegetables business in CIS
Armenia: prices of fruits and vegetables grow despite heavy crops
Despite a heavy crop of fruits and vegetables in Armenia this year, their prices continue to grow, according to the latest data of the National Statistical Service, which say that prices for foodstuffs in August increased by 0.3% from July, driven primarily by rise in the prices of meat products, soft drinks, vegetables and potatoes from 0.3% to 11.8%.
The prices for vegetables and potatoes increased by 11.8% from July and by 15% if compared to 2014 August. Incidentally, farmers sell their products at a relatively low cost. Prices grow after they are ‘seized’ by resellers.
Babken Pipoyan, head of a consumer rights watchdog called ‘Informed and Protected Consumer’ explains this situation by the lack of supervision over resellers and absence of realistic prices for agricultural products.
"There is no clear policy on this issue. Farmers are not always able to deliver their crops for selling to the city, and city residents do not go to the villages to buy fruits or vegetables. This allows resellers to sell products at high prices," says Pipoyan.
According to him, Armenian farmers do not benefit from heavy crops, because this creates for them a string of sale-related problems.
"Every time we have a good harvest of agricultural products, a real chaos begins in the market. Farmers are not interested in getting good yields, and that's it," he said.
Pipoyan believes that in order to prevent unjustified hikes of agricultural products the government should set ‘realistic’ prices for them each year so that resellers are unable to buy them from farmers at low prices.
According to the National Statistical Service (NSS), about 328.4 billion drams worth agricultural products were produced in the country in January-July in current prices, a 14.8% rise from the year before. NSS said also consumer prices in August 2015 grew by 0.7% as compared to the previous month. The government projection of 2015 inflation is 4% (± 1.5%). ($ 1 - 475.81 drams).