TOBA TEK SINGH: Mango traders are facing huge financial losses during the current season as they say they are unable pay to the orchard owners against the purchases due to the low prices of mango in the market.

The belt of mango orchards starts from three dozen villages of Toba district’s Pirmahal tehsil, adjacent to Khanewal district across the Shorkot Cantonment and PAF Shorkot Rafique Airbase and it goes up to Rahim Yar Khan and the interior Sindh.

Talking to Dawn, a local mango trader, Sheikh Muhammad Zahid, says a 13kg mango crate of Chaunsa variety was sold at Rs1,000 to Rs1,200 last year but during the current season it is being sold at just Rs350 to Rs400 per crate. He claimed Rs160 per crate are the expenditures of picking, grading, packing and loading mangoes in the orchards.

“When traders send the fruit to other parts of the country, including Peshawar, Rawalpindi, Karachi or Quetta, a truck containing 800 crates is hired at average Rs25,000 and if transportation cost is added to the price of 13kg Chaunsa crate, traders earn nothing,” he adds.

Rana Shahid Ali, another mango trader, says that last year Punjab’s mango was exported to the Gulf countries and its per crate price was profitable for the traders but this year even the best quality mango of Chaunsa variety also could not be exported which caused great loss to the traders.

Muhammad Ansar, a mango exporter having his commission shop in Karachi’s New Fruit and Vegetable Market, talking by phone says during the month of Ramazan, the mango traders of Sindh earned good money through export of Sindhri variety to Iran, Saudi Arabia, Muscat, Sharjah, Dubai and some other countries.

“However, when the most demanded variety of Chaunsa came in the market from Punjab after Eidul Fitr, it was found having blackish skin due to severe hot weather while the quality of its pulp had also been affected which made it impossible to export.”

Ansar says that like the mango traders of Punjab, the exporters and commission agents of Karachi’s market are also having a hard time as they often pay millions of rupees in advance to the traders of Punjab against the mango supply but this year the money invested by Karachi’s exporters could not be recovered.

Published in Dawn, August 16th, 2016