India leads in global pepper export orders

Despite the busy harvesting season in the world's largest pepper producing nation, importers from the USA, Europe, Canada and Russia have been active in the Indian black pepper market for the last couple of weeks.

The country has already won orders for export of 500 tonnes of black pepper for May shipment and more deals are likely to be sealed during the month.

Leading exporters told Business Standard that though the rates of $3900/3975 a tonne finalised for the June and July shipments were not viable as the market was volatile for the last couple of months, there would be orders from the US and Europe as these countries would be out of stock by the month-end.

For importers, this is the right time to procure the Indian origin MG1 pepper at 'reasonably' low prices.

As the supply position has been tight in Vietnam, the exporters there had raised the price of ASTA to $4010 a tonne. For 500 GL, they quote $3535 and for 550 GL they have enhanced the tag to $3785, making India the cheapest alternative.

According to exporters who visited Vietnam recently, the country would have a maximum production of 90,000 tonne and the growers are holding stocks back anticipating better prices.

Brazil and Indonesia are already out of stock as they had shipped 90 per cent of their last year's production.

So, the global factors are in favour of India. Despite the recent appreciation of the rupee, India has an upper hand in the black pepper export market due to the lower price tags prevalent in India compared with Vietnam.