AZE.US
Azerbaijan is becoming increasingly dependent on imported flowers even though it has the climate, land and market demand to grow more of them at home.
That was the broader point raised by REAL party chairman Natig Jafarli, who used fresh rose import figures to ask a sharper question: if Azerbaijanis can build a flower business thousands of miles away in Ecuador, why are they not developing the same business inside Azerbaijan?
According to the figures he cited, Azerbaijan imported 480,000 roses in January alone at a total cost of $652,000. The average landed cost came to about 2.20 manats per flower.
The largest share came from Ecuador, which supplied 366,000 roses worth $525,000. That put the average cost at roughly 2.40 manats per rose. Kenya ranked second, with 45,000 roses imported for $56,000, or about 1.70 manats per flower. Imports from the Netherlands rose fourfold from a year earlier, Jafarli said, reaching 6,300 roses worth $7,100, with an average cost of 1.91 manats each.
The issue, however, is not limited to import statistics or retail markups. Jafarli said the flowers are later sold on the local market at prices that are often two to three times higher.
His main argument was broader. There are claims, he said, that Azerbaijanis are involved in the flower business in Ecuador and have managed to build plantations, production capacity and packaging networks there.
If that is true, he argued, it leads to an obvious question: why can people who are able to organize such a business on the other side of the world not build it in Azerbaijan?
His point was simple. If roses can be grown in Ecuador, packaged, shipped across the world and still reach Azerbaijan at around 2.40 manats per stem, then the problem is clearly not that the business model itself is impossible. The real problem is that domestic conditions do not appear to support the sector well enough.
That argument overlaps with what local growers are saying. Ali Yakhshibayov, a flower producer in the Nardaran settlement who has been working in the sector for more than 10 years, says local flowers are not inferior to imported ones in quality. He says demand exists and producers are ready to expand.
Experts also say Azerbaijan has suitable conditions for flower cultivation, especially in lowland areas. Roses are already grown in places such as Ganja and the Quba-Khachmaz zone, but production remains too limited to make a serious difference in the market.
One of the main reasons is cost. Market participants say higher natural gas prices for greenhouses have pushed production costs up sharply. As those costs rose, some growers and investors began leaving flower cultivation for other sectors with lower risks and lower overhead.
That has made it harder for domestic producers to compete, both inside Azerbaijan and abroad. The result is a striking imbalance: a country that once exported flowers is now increasingly reliant on imports.
Jafarli reduced that conclusion to a wider economic problem. Azerbaijan, he said, has people who know how to work, build supply chains and create businesses. What is missing is an environment that allows those capabilities to scale at home rather than abroad.
He also noted that Russia imported 118 million flowers from Ecuador in January alone. If Azerbaijani entrepreneurs are indeed involved in that chain, he said, that only strengthens the point: the issue is not business ability, but why that ability is producing larger results outside Azerbaijan than inside it.
AZE.US