Lack of potato varieties hindering exports despite huge potential

Staff Reporter :
Despite ample potato production, lack of varieties, standardisation, and freight rates has hindered the country’s export growth of potato over the years.
Bangladesh produced 11 million tonnes of potato considered the third largest producer in Asia, after China and India and exported only 0.8 million tonnes in the previous financial year of 2021-2022.
As potato is the only surplus agricultural product of Bangladesh with 1.5 to 2.5 million tonnes of potential exportable volume, so far in the current fiscal year FY23, Exporters shipped only 0.68 million tonnes of potato.
According to data from Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), Bangladesh can export only 0.31 per cent of the total exported potatoes in the world although it is the seventh biggest potato producer worldwide.
Malaysia is currently the biggest potato export market of Bangladesh with More than a third of potato exports went there. Apart from this, it exports to Sri Lanka, Nepal, Singapore, Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Jordan, and others.
Recently, the government signed an agreement with Russia for the export of potatoes. Noted that, Russia was imposed a ban on Bangladesh’s potato in 2014 owing to detection of ‘Brown rot’ disease in potato. However, it was lifted in March 2022 as the Bangladesh government took measures to make potatoes safe and bacteria-free.
Lack of exportable variety of potato has been a major barrier to boost export with infirm linkages between farmers and exporters, standardisation is holding back Bangladesh’s huge potential in potato-export, according to agri-experts. Increasing freight rates along with surging production cost and wasted potato during storage also hindering the export process as well, they added.
Regarding this issue, Director General of Agriculture Extension Department, Badal Chandra Biswas said that this year potato export will increase and the newly developed varieties of seeds including ‘Sunshine’ a quick-growing and high yields one will also contribute to ensure export growth of potato for coming years.
Meanwhile, not only the fall of potato export, exports of all vegetables from Bangladesh significantly dropped during the July to March period of the current fiscal year of FY23.
Bangladesh’s earnings from vegetable exports was US dollar 46.26 million during the July-March period of the current fiscal year of 2022-23 , a 43.36 per cent fall compared to the same period of the previous fiscal year.