Azerbaijan’s fruit and vegetable export sector is undergoing a change that deserves more attention than the headline figures alone might suggest. The country is still heavily dependent on a limited number of foreign markets, but the direction of travel is becoming clearer: Azerbaijan’s agricultural exports are gradually becoming more diversified. This is particularly visible in the tomato sector.
Fruit and vegetable exports have long been one of the most important components of Azerbaijan’s non-oil economy. In 2024, they accounted for more than 21% of non-oil exports, while in 2025 their share of Azerbaijan’s main non-oil exports rose to 25%. In the first half of 2026, Azerbaijan’s fruit and vegetable exports increased by 18.9% year-on-year.
However, despite this strong growth, their share of the country’s total non-oil and gas exports fell to around 10%. This decline in share does not mean that Azerbaijan’s fruit and vegetable exports have contracted. Rather, it reflects the extraordinary surge in gold exports, which rose to more than $3.6 billion and significantly increased the overall volume of non-oil exports.
As a result, fruit and vegetables now account for a smaller percentage of a much larger non-oil export basket, even though the sector itself continues to grow. Azerbaijan exported gold worth approximately $3.64 billion in the first half of 2026, compared with $326.2 million a year earlier. Gold exports increased roughly 30-fold in value and 13.6-fold in volume.
This raises an important question. Is this a new, permanent pillar of Azerbaijan’s export structure, or is it partly the result of an exceptional transaction and unusually favorable circumstances? Gold has suddenly moved from being a relatively modest non-oil export item to one of the country's largest export categories.
Whether this scale can be sustained in the coming years remains uncertain. That uncertainty makes agricultural exports even more important. Unlike a large one-off shipment of a high-value commodity, fruit and vegetable production is deeply connected to employment, regional economies, logistics, packaging, transportation, greenhouse farming and thousands of smaller businesses and households.
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