World trade

Floriculture is an important and upcoming trade with potential both in domestic as well as export markets. The world over, the flowers have gained an important place in one’s life be it for religious purposes or personal decoration. The global floriculture industry with an investment of about US$ 40 billion is growing at an annual rate of 10 to 12 %. The USA, Japan, Western Europe and the major markets for the flowers. Besides, Eastern Europe, South Korea, Thailand and Indonesia are also coming up as large consuming countries. In the producing countries Netherlands alone enjoys 56% followed by Columbia 11%. Among the floriculture products major share is of "Cutflowers".

Total import/export trade of cutflowers in the world is estimated at US $ 4100 million. Main importing and exporting countries are given in Table 1 and 2 respectively in value terms. Of the US $ 3716.8 millions of imports, the share of Germany was the highest (30.3%) followed by USA (16.8%), UK (9.7%), France (9.7%) and Netherlands (8.4%). These five countries together shared nearly 75% imports. Netherlands which exports large amount of flowers also imports cutflowers. Regarding exports (Table 2) Netherlands had the maximum share of US $ 2102.2 million (56.5%) followed by Columbia (14.1%), Israel (4.2%) together constituting nearly 75% of world’s export. In fact, the share of Netherlands in the total exports has come down from 64% in 1991 to 56.5% in 1995. This is due to increasing shares of exports from developing countries like Columbia, Kenya, Ecuador, Thailand, Zimbabwe etc. India has also appeared in the world cutflower trade with about 0.3% share of exports.

Floriculture exports from India:

Floriculture is a very broad group consisting wide range of products such as flowers, cutflowers, flowering and ornamental plants, bulbs, tubers, corms, rhizomes, chicory, orchids, mosses etc. For export purposes, all floriculture products are grouped into four categories, which are given in Table 3 along with their qualities and values for the year 1998-99. It is seen that cutflowers in the largest group sharing nearly 72% value of floriculture exports. This is followed by a group of foliage, branches mosses and plant parts (17.16%), group of rooted cuttings, slips, mushroom spawn (9.92%) and the last bulbs, tubes, tuberous roots, rhizomes, chicory etc. (1.05%). Thus the cutflowers - fresh and dried dominate floriculture export trade of India.

Cutflowers exports

The cutflowers are exported in two forms:

1. Fresh form for bouquets and ornamental purposes.
2. Dried, dyed, bleached etc. for other purposes.

The information of export of fresh cutflowers in respect of quantities values and the countries to which exported is given in Table 4 for the 1998-99. Total quantity exported was 2722 MT valued at Rs.25.12 crores. The biggest export market was Japan importing 19.65% cutflower followed by USA 10.44%, Germany (7.96%), UK (7.40%), Australia (5.43%) and Netherlands (4.67%). The fresh cutflowers are exported to 54 countries, but nearly 68% are exported to 10 countries shown in the table. Unit value revealed that the highest price was paid by Netherlands (Rs.376.62/kg), followed by Japan (Rs.155.92/kg) and Singapore (Rs.141.49/kg). The overall average price received was Rs.92.26/kg. The price offered by USA was quite low (Rs. 51.33/kg). Information of export of other cutflowers is given in Table 5. The quality of cutflowers exported was 8295 MT valued at Rs.51.04 crores. They were exported to in all 55 countries but the major export markets were USA sharing 35.25% exports followed by Japan (27.98%), Netherlands (9.50%), Germany (5.41%), U.K (4.91%) and so on. These five countries shared about 83% of total exports. Thus, the exports to different countries are unevenly spread. Unit values or prices received varied from Rs.26/kg by Japan to Rs.137.38 by Germany. The overall average unit value received was Rs.61.52/kg. There was a very wide difference in the prices received from different importing countries. Although USA and Japan imported largest quantities, they offered low prices.

Table 1

Main import markets of cutflowers by value 1995

(Value million US $ [CIF])

Table 2

Main exporting countries of cutflowers by value 1995

(Value US million dollars)

Table 3

Export of floriculture products from India (1998-99)

Table 4

Export of fresh cutflowers from India- direction of trade (1998-99)

Table 5

Export of other cutflowers- direction of trade (1998-99)

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