BM Desk Report
Bangladesh is not only a big onion market, but the country is number 1 in the world in onion import in terms of quantity. This figure was obtained by comparing country wise onion import data.
According to the National Board of Revenue (NBR), Bangladesh imported 727,000 tonnes of onion in 2022. No other country imported more onion than Bangladesh that year. According to the United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics Database (UN Comtrade), the country that imported the most onions after Bangladesh in 2022 was the United States.
Their import amount was 6 lakh 60 thousand tons. The next position was Malaysia. Their import is one hundred and five lakh tons.
Bangladesh is not far behind in terms of local production. Bangladesh is among the top 10 countries in the world in onion production. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Bangladesh ranks seventh in onion production, but domestic production is not meeting the demand. As a result, the import of this product, which is essential for cooking, is increasing, but the amount of this import is so much that it has taken Bangladesh to the top of the world list.
Economists believe that there is a relationship between the increase in people’s income and the consumption of onions. Research director of research organization Center for Policy Dialogue (CPD) Khandkar Golam Moazzem told that it has been seen that the consumption of onion also increases with the increase in people’s income. Now the consumption of onion has increased due to increasing demand for processed food. This demand cannot be met with local production. Because of this, onions have to be imported.
There is no fear that Bangladesh’s position in the top list of onion imports will change in the future. Because, with one month left to the end of 2023, the previous year’s import record has also been broken. According to the data of NBR, the import of onion has exceeded 864 thousand tons in 11 months of this year. That is, it can be assumed that the name of Bangladesh will be in the top list of imports even at the end of 2023.
After India stopped onion export in October 2019, Dutch onion was the first import in the Bangladesh market. In the first half of 2020, the Holland Onion Association stated that Bangladesh was one of the top 12 destinations for onion exports from the Netherlands at that time.
However, in March of that year, India lifted the ban on onion exports. As a result, onion traders of this country turned away from the Netherlands and started importing from India again. Because, the easiest and cheapest onion can be brought from this neighboring country, which is the largest onion exporter in the world. Since then, the regrets of the European country began to be written in the virtual pages of the journal.
