In this year, Saudi Arabia appeared as a new export market for apples from Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is probably a new potential market instead of Russia.
In the first two months of this year, there were no exports of apples from Bosnia and Herzegovina to the Russian market, and the reasons for this, as stated by the Foreign Trade Chamber of Bosnia and Herzegovina (VTKBH), are mainly the war as a state of emergency, climate change and the energy crisis. In the first two months of last year, apples with a total value of 519,296 BAM were exported to Russia.
Saudi Arabia is currently in the “top 3” when it comes to the export of apples, which in the first two months amounted to BAM 129,344. In that period, apples worth 347,481 BAM were exported to the United Arab Emirates, while the export of apples to Montenegro amounted to 320,530 BAM. Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, Italy were also some of the export markets for apples from BiH.
In that period, the most apples were imported into BiH from Poland, worth 1,028,214 BAM, followed by North Macedonia, 997,073 BAM, and Italy, worth 570,876 BAM.
According to VTKBiH data, 19.2 million kg of apples were imported into BiH last year, which is 10.8 million BAM in monetary terms, and at the same time 5.1 million kg or 7.6 million BAM were exported. Exports are lower than imports by 14.1 million kg or 3.2 million BAM in monetary terms.
The export value of edible fruits and nuts in 2022 amounted to 119.4 million BAM, which is 21.3 percent less than the export in 2021, when it amounted to 151.6 million BAM. Quantitatively, 30,861 tons of edible fruits and nuts were exported from BiH, which is 18.4 percent less than in 2021, when almost 37,830 tons were exported. Although in decline, compared to the previous year, exports were dominated by frozen raspberries.
In 2022, the import of edible fruits and nuts amounted to 230.3 million BAM, which is 8.6 percent more than the import in 2021. However, if the import is observed quantitatively, a drop of 8.5 percent is observed, that is, 16,697 t less fruit was imported compared to the previous year. Although reduced in quantity compared to the previous year, imports are dominated by bananas and citrus fruits.
“Bosnia and Herzegovina has a market economy, i.e. the prices on the market are determined on the basis of supply and demand, and because of this, BiH does not have appropriate protection instruments at its disposal that would limit the enormous import of certain products, although we are witnesses that BiH has ideal conditions for their production, which certainly does not support the fact that from year to year a decreasing number of people decide to engage in fruit growing,” they stated for Fena from VTKBiH.
In order to improve the position of domestic producers and improve competitiveness, as they added, it is necessary to do a lot of things and bring many permanent solutions in which a wide range of actors would be involved, and this, above all, refers to the increase in the number of official controls during the import of goods from foreign markets, increasing incentive measures, systematic investments in the modernization of production due to the decreasing number of domestic workforce, high-quality association of producers with the aim of consolidating the production and branding of domestic apples and pears so that consumers can recognize and distinguish them from imported apples and pears.
