Minister of Municipality and Environment H E Mohamed bin Abdullah Al Rumaihi touring the winter market after inaugurating the Al Shamal Yard, yesterday. Pic: Salim Matramkot/The Peninsula
DOHA: Minister of Municipality and Environment H E Mohamed bin Abdullah Al Rumaihi opened yesterday a new winter vegetable market in Al Shamal which offers varieties of vegetables in large quantity directly from local farms at lower prices. Some outlets at new market offered also locally produced sugarcane and oranges.
Winter vegetable markets have become highly popular among residents as over 1.2 million boxes of vegetables were sold last year compared to over 4 million boxes of vegetables sold during 2012 to 2017.
The new market ‘Al Shamal Yard’, located in Al Shamal city opposite to headquarters of Al Shamal Municipality near Woqod petrol station, is the fourth market after Al Mazrouah, Al Khor-Dhakhira and Al Wakrah markets which were reopened yesterday for this season. All four winter vegetable markets run by the Agricultural Affairs Department at the Ministry of Municipality and Environment will work from Thursday to Saturday from 7am to 5pm.
The fifth winter vegetable market will open in Al Shihaniya within few months, said the Minister of Municipality and Environment while speaking to the media person on the sidelines of the inaugural ceremony.
Speaking about local animal products, the Minister said: “Under food security program, work is going on to increase self-sufficiency of the country in animals production (red meat) to 30 percent from existing 15 percent.”
He said that strategy of food security aims at increasing strategic reserve of livestock and production of local animal farms.
“Al Shamal winter vegetable market is a new platform to market the local products directly from farms to consumers without brokers,” said the Minister.
He said that that these markets provide opportunity to local farmers to offer their products without any marketing cost because Ministry of Municipality and Environment bears all operation cost of the markets.
“New market will serve the people residing in Al Shamal and provide good profits to the farmers encouraging them to increase the productions,” said the Minister.
“Ministry of Municipality and Environment has launched a number of initiatives including premium products, Qatari farms and winter vegetable markets to provide platforms to market local products as the Ministry believes that marketing is most important factor to increase the production,” said Yusuf Khalid Al Khulaifi, Director of Agriculture Affairs.
Addressing the inaugural ceremony, Al Khulaifi said that 12 farms are participating in the new market taking the total count of participating farms in such markets to 100 agricultural farms, 75 animal farms and 14 fishermen.
He said that winter vegetable markets attracted large number of customers. “During past six seasons from 2012 to 2017 over 4 million boxes of vegetables were sold. Over 1.2 million boxes of vegetables were sold alone in last season 2017,” Al Khulaifi added.
He said that winter vegetable markets have become a big marketing platform for local products as over 20 percent of total local vegetables were sold at these markets last season.
Winter vegetable markets offer vegetables at lower prices from the daily price list of vegetables issued by the Ministry of Economy and Commerce, said Abdurrahman Al Sulaiti, Supervisor of the markets.
