Page 243 - DMGT509_RURAL MARKETING

Rural Marketing

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Case Study Export of Cut Flowers from India

ural India has woken up to the immense potential of exporting flowers from India.
Floriculture is an important and upcoming trade with potential both in domestic
Ras well as export markets for 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$ 50 billion is growing at an annual rate of 10 to
12%. The USA, Japan, Western Europe are 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 the major share is of “Cut-flowers”.
Total import/export trade of cut flowers in the world is estimated at US $ 4100 million.
Main importing and exporting countries are given 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 cut flowers. Regarding exports 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 cut flower 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, cut
flowers, flowering and ornamental plants, bulbs, tubers, corms, rhizomes, chicory, orchids,
mosses etc. For export purposes, all floriculture products are grouped into four categories,
that are given in Table 3 along with their qualities and values for the year 1998-99. It is
seen that cut flowers 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 lastly bulbs, tubes, tuberous
roots, rhizomes, chicory etc. (1.05%). Thus the cut flowers both fresh and dried, dominate
floriculture export trade of India.
Cut Flowers Exports

The cut flowers are exported in two forms:
1. Fresh form for bouquets and ornamental purposes.
2. Dried, dyed and bleached for other purposes.
The information of export of fresh cut flowers in respect of quantities values and the
countries to which exported is given for the 1998-99. Total quantity exported was 2722 MT
valued at 25.12 crores. The biggest export market was Japan importing 19.65% cut flower
followed by USA (10.44%), Germany (7.96%), UK (7.40%), Australia (5.43%) and Netherlands
(4.67%). The fresh cut flowers 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 ( 376.62/kg), followed by Japan ( 155.92/kg) and Singapore ( 141.49/kg).
Contd...

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