According to the agricultural trade publication East Fruit, Central Asians have little taste for bananas.
Kazakhstan has the highest consumption rate but with an average of 4.5 kg of fresh bananas eaten per person, per year, comes nowhere near Uganda where each year, individuals enjoy a whopping 270 kg of bananas.
Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan are fast catching up with Kazakhstan whilst in Tajikistan, the annual banana consumption per head is only 2.3 kg. In Turkmenistan, it appears that many citizens never touch the fruit. Lagging far behind its neighbours, a very modest 160 grams are consumed per head, per year; a figure which according to East Fruit analysts is even lower than that recorded for North Korea.
Not surprisingly, countries with the highest banana consumption tend to be those where the fruit is grown and exported and by way of explaining the above data, Andriy Yarmak, an economist in the investment department of the Unites Nations (UN) Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) stated, “Such a low consumption of bananas in Central Asian countries is due to the distance of the countries from the port infrastructure, which makes logistics very expensive. In addition, many countries in the region have high tariff and non-tariff barriers that prevent the import of exotic fruits into these regions. The third factor is the relatively low prices of local fruits, especially in the season of their mass production.”
