Analysis report on India’s Emerging Apple Market

Submitted by: Dewasish Ghoshal (PGDMA) India is rank as 6 th largest world’s apple producing country. And in area it is the 2nd largest one. Apples are grown in temperate climates. To meet this condition apple production is limited only to the states like Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttaranchal. The localized production of apples in extreme Northern States of the countries leads to high price in the other part of the country. The Indian apples also have to compete with US and Chinese apples which are imported. Factors which contributes to high trading costs and margins includes lack of competition in the marketing system, lack of investment and integration in the marketing chain, and the marketing and price risks faced by growers. The presence of imported apples demonstrates an opportunity for domestic growers to increase earnings by improving quality to compete with imported apples. Although, the income of the people has increased significantly but there is very slow rise in production and consumptions of apples. A high price for both domestic and imported apples compared with other domestically available fruit is the main reason for the low per capita apple consumption. Still one can consider apple to be “rich person fruit”, as it seems that it is available for the richer section of the society.

Though the harvesting area has been increased since passed decayed but this is not contributing in increasing the growth and yield of the apples. Still we have very slow growth rate and low yield of apples. One of the major constraints of low yield of apple is existence of very old orchards. The other factors accounts for low yield are erratic moisture and poor water use efficiency, low use of fertilizer, weather and price variability etc. Generally we find that Banana is most commonly consumed in our country. The reason might be the easily availability in all kinds of market and even at cheaper price. This pulls the consumers from apple to banana markets. One has to pay high tariffs for the import of apples and for domestic market the transportation costs mainly leads to high price for the apples.

India has many non tariff measures applicable for the import of apple, few of which are plant quarantine regulations, pesticide residue regulations and

apple waxing regulations. These all leads to increase price of the commodity. To have uniformity in distribution of the apple in Indian market one can go for the quality and price separation for domestic and imported apples. Also one should find himself safe in growing apple. The market for the processed products has also to be taken into account. For better marketing and increasing consumption the sellers also give emphasis on formation of wholesale price. The domestic market of India for the apples appears to be very poorly integrated; so, we have to look for this area also. A key finding of this analysis is that effort to reduce the margins or profits and uncounted cost receive by importers, wholesaler and retailer. The improvement in marketing efficiency and reducing retail prices is likely to be a key to future growth in apple consumption, price competitiveness and India’s share of imports.