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KOCHI, Feb. 22

THE steep fall in the unit value of pepper in the international market to less than half of last fiscal has squeezed the spices export earnings so far during the current fiscal.

Hence, the improvement in terms of quantity of pepper exported had not made any positive impact on the total value realisation. A total quantity of 18,000 tonnes were exported during April-January 2001-02 as against 15,710 tonnes in the same period last fiscal. However, the total value realisation declined by Rs 132.20 crore to Rs 172.23 crore from Rs 304.43 crore. The fall was effected by the sharp decline in the unit value of the commodity that plummeted from Rs 193.78 per kg during April-January 2000-01 to Rs 95.68 per kg in the same period this fiscal.

The Spices Board sources said the major contributor to the fall in the overall spices exports was the poor pepper prices. During the first 10 months of the current fiscal, spices exports dropped by Rs 211.39 crore (to which pepper contribution is Rs 132.20 crore) to Rs 1,305.04 crore from Rs 1,516.43 in the same period last fiscal. In terms of quantity it fell to 1,91,825 tonnes from 2,04,239 tonnes.

The other major items that witnessed a substantial drop were cardamom (small) by Rs 22.60 crore, turmeric by Rs 24.20 crore, cummin by Rs 34.87 crore, mint oil by Rs 32.41 crore, garlic by Rs 9.32 crore, fenugreek by Rs 7.26 and corriander by Rs 4.32 crore. Only a few items had shown some positive growth such as chilli, an increase of Rs 16.50 crore, and ginger of Rs 1.14 crore, other seeds (up by Rs 2.01 crore) and other spices.

Despite the decline in unit value export of spice oleoresins and oils showed an increase of Rs 38.90 crore because of the rise in terms of quantity.

Stiff competition from other producing countries, especially for pepper from Vietnam, Brazil, Indonesia and Malaysia was being attributed to the poor performance. On the other hand, higher rate of growth in supply of pepper as against the marginal growth in demand was being exploited by the market players, they pointed out. In the case of certain other spices also the situation was similar.

The growth in the export of oleoresins and oils gives the indication that there was a consistent growth in demand for these value added products in the developed world, the sources said. Therefore, they added, the solution to improve the export earnings was to go in for value addition apart from promoting Indian cuisines abroad.

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