Wholesale prices for onions in Georgia have jumped from 1.20 GEL/kg ($0.44/kg) to 1.40 GEL/kg ($0.52/kg) in the first week of December 2022. While demand has grown due to the influx of Russian citizens, the major driving factor behind the spike is on the supply side. Onion stocks, both local and imported are quite low at the moment reports east-fruit.com
Expensive imports
Turkey, has banned exports to support its market and importing onions from other neighboring countries has become more expensive recently, there is a lack of transporting vehicles making transportation more expensive. Many Georgian suppliers think that prices will further increase, and are holding onto their stocks of onions. This puts further pressure on the prices to increase. Onion prices are believed to rise to the point to enable imports. With a rough estimation, right now it costs about 1.20-1.30 GEL/kg to import onions including tax and transportation expenditures.