Information for fruit and vegetables business in CIS
Ukraine: vegetables less expensive last week, prices of imported fruits up
Vegetable prices have gone down again in Ukraine last week (March 4-11, 2016). At the same time, fruits became more expensive in the majority of cases, according to Fruit-Inform price monitoring.
«Last week almost all supermarket chains reduced their prices for traditional vegetables, apples and greenhouse vegetables in view of very low retail sales rates. As a result, such a situation has provoked panic in the market», comments Ms. Tetiana Getman, Head of Fruit-Inform. «Last week many middlemen that had purchased produce at record high prices in autumn and growers that had not hurried with sales until the beginning of spring started actively selling their stocks; therefore, prices began to fall faster».
Traditional vegetables became 3.6% less expensive in Ukraine last week with the most rapid decrease in prices registered in the carrot segment: down by 5.7% week-on-week.
At the same time, potato prices were stable.
Prices of greenhouse vegetables went down more significantly under conditions of a traditional decrease in the demand after holidays. Cucumbers became 10% less expensive, and tomato prices decreased by 3.8%. It should also be noted that the share of low-quality tomatoes increased in the Ukrainian market, and their prices were 16% lower than those fixed for produce of higher quality.
Apples also became 8.5% less expensive last week.
At the same time, citrus fruits became more expensive due to closer end of the season of Turkish produce. As a result, mandarin prices went up by 17%. Banana prices also went up by 18.3%.