SOURCE / ECONOMY
Onion prices dive as export orders sink amid pandemic
Published: Apr 06, 2020 09:13 PM

Workers sort onions in Xilin Gol League, North China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in 2017. Photo: CFP



Onion prices in China have plummeted nearly 70 percent since February as export orders have decreased amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the Global Times learned on Monday.

According to Tridge, a market intelligence website, onion prices in East China's Jiangsu Province sank from 50 US cents per kilogram on February 24 to 21 cents on March 30, a nearly 70-percent decrease.

The huge decline was mainly due to decreased overseas orders, as China is one of the world's major onion producers and exporters, Li Guoxiang, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Monday.

According to Tridge, China's onion exports account for 15.1 percent of the world's total.

Liu Jingping, a vegetable exporter who mainly gets overseas orders from South Korea and Japan, told the Global Times that since the COVID-19 outbreak, he has seen a decrease of at least one-third in orders.

"Though the price varies from time to time seasonally, the impact of the epidemic is very evident this time," Liu said. 

"South Korea and Japan are major Chinese vegetable importers with stable demand as they don't have adequate vegetable production capacity. Decreased orders from them would result in a price drop in China," Li said, adding that "it's not only onions since the beginning of the pandemic, prices of many other agricultural products in China have also dropped."

During February and March, onion prices in South Korea fluctuated between 75 cents and $1.23 per kilogram as the country grappled with the COVID-19 outbreak. Prices in Japan experienced a similar situation, according to Tridge.

Although the epidemic has been gradually controlled in China, it is still hard to say when the onion price will recover as the pandemic worldwide has been worsening, Li said, noting that governments should act as coordinators to help farmers, traders and buyers recover their businesses.


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