May 2024: Palaw costs decline by 18%.
Prices of carrot saw a slight increase.
In May 2024, the cost of preparing palaw in Ashgabat decreased to an average of 60.2 Turkmen manat, an 18.0% drop from 73.4 manat in May 2023. This also represented a slight 2.1% decrease from April 2024’s cost of 61.5 manat. On a global scale, food prices saw an average reduction of 3.3% in May 2024 compared to the previous year, according to the FAO’s Food Price Index.
Ashgabat observed a general trend of price reductions across all products in May 2024 per year-on-year data, except for carrots. Carrot prices were up by 4.9% on a YoY basis. Onion prices saw a large drop, plummeting by 65.6%. This was followed by significant reductions in rice (-29.2%), wheat flour (-23.4%), sunflower oil prices (-22.6%), and beef (-8.7%) as illustrated in Figure 1.
Onion prices experienced a substantial drop of 65.6%, falling from 5.5 manat per kg in May 2023 to 1.9 manat per kg in May 2024. The high prices in the previous year were due to a harsh winter that reduced the onion crop causing prices to spike. Due to those shortages, most farmers increased their onion harvest, which led to a substantial increase in onion supply and lower prices in 2024.
FAO Price Index Changes for Various Product Categories
- The FAO Cereal Price Index, which includes wheat and other grains, dropped by 8.2% year-over-year in May 2024.
- The FAO Meat Price Index dropped by 0.9% in the same period.
- The FAO Vegetable Oil Price Index saw an increase of 7.7% in May 2024.
Correlation between palaw prices and the black market rate
In recent years (2020-2022), Palaw Index price changes closely followed the USD/manat black market exchange rate. However, this correlation seemed to weaken due to a stable exchange rate around 19 manat/USD since 2022. The biggest driver of changes in palaw prices in 2023 were external factors such as increased supply of sunflower oil and wheat flour in the global market.
Methodology
Prices of ingredients in the Palaw Index are collected for 1 kg of onion, carrot, beef, rice, and flour, and 1 liter of cooking oil. Based on the methodology, in order to cook palaw for a family of four, we use 0.3 liters of cooking oil, 0.5 kg of onion, 1 kg of carrots, 0.6 kg of beef, 1 kg of rice, and 0.5 kg of flour in our formula. Please click here to learn more about the methodology of the Palaw Index.
Progres team strives to make Palaw Index reports as inclusive as possible by tracking the price changes of palaw in all major cities of Turkmenistan. Therefore, we kindly ask you to help us in collecting the prices by filling this out the form.
