A recovery in export earnings
Uzbekistan earned $70.4 million from fresh sweet-cherry exports in 2024, up 22.7% from $57.4 million in 2023. The recovery brought earnings above their 2019 level of $53.0 million, although they remained below the $84.9 million recorded in 2021.
The recovery also came with greater dependence on one destination. Russia accounted for 80.1% of export value in 2024, compared with 66.3% a year earlier. Understanding the sector therefore requires looking at both earnings and where those earnings come from.
This report uses Uzbekistan-reported exports under HS 080929: fresh cherries other than sour cherries. That category is used here for sweet cherries, or gilos. It excludes sour cherries, known as olcha, as well as dried and preserved cherries. Older figures for the combined HS 080920 category are not mixed into this series.
More value from less recorded weight
Sweet-cherry export value and recorded weight. View underlying data →
UN Comtrade records 32,215 tonnes of these exports in 2024, compared with 49,985 tonnes in 2023. Export value rose even as recorded weight fell by 35.6%. Dividing value by net weight gives an average export unit value of $2.19 per kilogram in 2024, compared with $1.15 in 2023.
That is an accounting relationship, not proof that growers received a corresponding price increase. Unit values can change with the mix of destinations, varieties, grades, shipment timing and reporting. They also include costs and margins that are not the same as farm income. Crucially, UN Comtrade flags the world-total net weights for 2019–2023 as estimated. The 2024 total is not flagged as estimated. This makes the weight comparison, and especially the unusually high calculated unit value in 2021, less secure than a simple chart might suggest.
The defensible conclusion is that reported export earnings recovered in 2024. The figures alone cannot establish which commercial or production factors caused that recovery, or whether farmer profits improved.
Russia dominates the destination mix
Uzbekistan Sweet Cherry Export Destinations in 2024. View underlying data →
Russia purchased $56.4 million of Uzbekistan’s fresh sweet-cherry exports in 2024. Kazakhstan followed with $7.0 million and Kyrgyzstan with $5.3 million. Together, the three destinations accounted for 97.6% of total export value. The United Arab Emirates and Belarus were much smaller markets, each accounting for less than 1%.
Russia’s share rose by 13.8 percentage points between 2023 and 2024. Its direct share was only 9.1% in 2019, when Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan took much larger shares. These are recorded immediate trading partners, however. The data do not identify every shipment’s final consumer or show whether cherries were subsequently re-exported.
For exporters, this concentration means a large part of the sector’s foreign earnings is linked to conditions in a single recorded market. Changes in demand, border procedures or transport conditions could therefore matter substantially. These are exposure channels, not findings that any particular disruption occurred or caused the observed annual changes.
Production is concentrated too
Uzbekistan’s official sweet-cherry production series records 210,300 tonnes in 2024, down 4.4% from 219,900 tonnes in 2023. Production was nevertheless 19.7% above its 2019 level.
Sweet-cherry production by region, 2024. View underlying data →
Andijan remained the largest producing region at 67,600 tonnes in 2024, around 32.1% of the national total. Samarkand produced 29,300 tonnes and Namangan 24,500 tonnes. Together, these three regions accounted for approximately 57.7% of national output. Bukhara and Fergana each produced 20,300 tonnes.
Production and exports measure different things. Production covers the harvest across all uses and markets, while the trade series measures recorded cross-border shipments of fresh non-sour cherries. The difference between the two should not be labelled domestic consumption: losses, processing, stocks, imports and differences in measurement would also need to be considered.
What stronger export performance would involve
The 2024 results point to two useful questions for future research: whether exporters can sustain earnings across seasons, and whether they can develop additional commercially meaningful destinations. More destination names alone would not demonstrate diversification if almost all export value still went to the same three buyers.
FAO has identified sweet cherries as Uzbekistan’s product under its One Country One Priority Product initiative. Its work has included value-chain analysis and training on orchard management, irrigation and pest management. This provides context for why production practices and the wider value chain matter. It does not establish that those activities caused the 2024 export recovery.
The next evidence to examine would include shipment timing, grade and variety, destination-specific unit values, and the costs of getting fruit to market. Without those details, higher export receipts should be treated as a positive trade outcome rather than a complete measure of the sector’s profitability.
Sources and method
Trade figures come from UN Comtrade, using reporter Uzbekistan (860), exports (X), annual frequency, commodity 080929, all immediate destination partners, and aggregate customs and transport categories. Original classifications are H5 for 2019–2022 and H6 for 2023–2024. Values are current US dollars. Weight is net kilograms, converted to tonnes by dividing by 1,000. Unit values equal export value divided by net kilograms.
All individual destination records are retained, including unspecified areas. Their values and weights reconcile to the corresponding world totals within $0.05 and 0.05 kilograms. World totals are excluded from the destination dataset to avoid double-counting. Shares use export value, not weight. The preview API returned no 2025 records when checked, so 2025 is omitted rather than recorded as zero.
Production comes from SIAT indicator 1.03.03.0051. Source figures in thousand tonnes are multiplied by 1,000. The regional dataset contains 14 territories over six years; national totals are excluded so they cannot be accidentally added to the regions. Rounding can cause small differences between regional sums and published national totals.
Policy context comes from FAO’s December 2023 report on Uzbekistan’s sweet-cherry sector. Percentage changes and shares are calculations from the cited data. This is descriptive analysis and does not identify causal effects.