Changchun (CEIS) --
China's ginseng market will be in short supply in the coming five years, and the ginseng price will remain stable or register a slight increase, it was predicted by related sources of northeast china's Jilin province.
Being china's no 1 ginseng producer, Jilin province's ginseng output and export volume accounts for 80 percent and 70 percent respectively of the country's total. however, the province's acreage sown to ginseng in recent years has been kept to around 35 million square meters, 60 percent less than the peak year of 1989, and the annual yield of wet ginseng has been kept between 130,000 to 150,000 tons.
Although the ginseng price has kept soaring in the past two years and the farmers are eager to raise output, yet it takes five to six years for ginseng to grow into marketable products after the sown acreage had been sharply reduced in recent years. it was, therefore, predicted that the national market will face an estimated shortage of 1,000 to 2,000 tons of ginseng products in the next five years.
The domestic consumption of ginseng has kept increasing at an annual rate of 1,000 to 1,500 tons. consumption of ginseng by industries now stands at over 2,000 tons and medicinal consumption at over 1,000 tons.
There are now over 1,000 varieties of ginseng tonics on sale in the market including ginseng tea, water-soaked ginseng , honey-coated ginseng tablets, sliced fresh ginseng and red ginseng and concentrated ginseng fluid and juice.
The international market demand for Chinese ginseng has also gone up. in addition to southeast Asia where people of Chinese origin like to use ginseng , poeple in west Europe and north America have also begun using ginseng under the influence of the idea "return to nature."
Moreover rok, a ginseng producer, has started to import chinese ginseng since last year due to its shrinking ginseng production because of rising domestic production cost. this will boost china's ginseng export.
>China's sluggish ginseng market has thus came to an end, and the prices are rising. in 1995 the government purchasing price of wet ginseng averaged 30 yuan per kilogram and the price of finished ginseng product was 170,000 Yuan per ton, almost reaching the previous peak price.
The sources disclosed that Jilin provnce will resort to economic means to combine the production, processing and sales of ginseng products into a integral network, and a provincial regulation governing the management of ginseng is now under discussion.
SOURCE : Xinhua News Agency - CEIS
1996. 07.
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