According to the State Service For Food Safety, in 2013-2017 94,344 tons of fresh apricots were exported from Armenia, while according to the statistical committee, only 45,826 tons of apricots were exported in the same period. In other words, the difference is more than two times (the State Revenue Committee (SRC) records and provides the statistical committee so little, which then publishes the figures).

Consider the time series of fresh apricot exports in more detail, as the SSFS records have always exceeded SRC data over the years. It should be noted that all the cargoes exceeding 5 kilograms are included in the SSFS registration, for which a phytosanitary certificate is issued, while another approach is taken by the SRC. You can tell the difference between the SSFS and SCRA data since 2015 in the infographic, reaching more than 7 times in 2017.

Whatever the case, we have what we have. Since the difference has increased greatly in the year 2016-2017, let’s try to estimate what kind of affect it can have on the monetary volume of exports, based on the average annual export price per kilogram.

According to this, in 2016 that totalled to 61 cents, and in 2017, 40 cents. Without disputing the declared prices, suppose that at least 95% of the exported SSFS accounts should be registered by the SRC. In this case, the export figure in 2016 should have been 11.3 million dollars instead of 1.92 million AMD, and in 2017, 10.9 million dollars instead of 1.57 million.

As you can see, the difference (incomplete declaration) is 9.37 and 9.31 million dollars. For comparison, in 2016 the total exports amounted to 1.792 billion dollars, and in 2017, 2.15 billion dollars.

As for the end of 2018, according to SSFS data, as of July 11, 44,131 tons of apricots have already been exported from Armenia, almost 1.55 times more than during the same period of the previous year. However, the statistical committee has not released the export item by commodity roster yet, and we cannot state how much has been recorded by the SRC and included in the official export index.

 

                                                                                          Economist Haykaz Fanyan

Clarification

The registration of ”Fresh Apricot”is maintained under the code 080910 in the Foreign Economic Activity Commodity Nomenclature

The basis for the data is in the UN Comtrade database, which transmits the information to the Statistical Committee, which may have slight deviations with the statistics released by the Statistical Committee.