China's apple exports have suffered poor sales and a precipitous decline in prices due to the COVID-19 outbreak in South-East Asia, the largest market for China's apples, according to exporters.

Li Guoping, a manager with Qixia Lewang Vegetable and Fruit Company in East China's Shandong Province, said that export orders from Southeast Asia have dropped 60 percent this year, causing severe losses for local farmers. 

"Last year I bought the apples from farmers at 6.4 yuan ($1.0) per kilogram but the current price has dropped to 3 yuan per kilogram, the lowest in decades," Li told the Global Times on Monday.

Li estimated that the average annual output of a farm is 15,000 kilograms of apples and the costs - including labor, pesticide and fertilizer, packaging and storage - would come to 30,000 yuan. 

"If the farmers sell the apples at the current price, there is little profit from their hard work throughout the year," he said.

The higher output last year, the early hoarding by farmers and the export downturn have forced the prices to edge down, Li said.

Southeast Asian countries account for more than 90 percent of China's apple exports. Since the Spring Festival, the epidemic situation in Southeast Asia has again become serious, which has hindered the apple exports.

With the rapid spread of the epidemic abroad, overseas demand has plummeted, and the closure of cities and roads has also interrupted the normal trade chain, according to exporters.

"I could have sold all the apples harvested last year by May but this year I still have one third left. I have nearly 1,000 tons of apples in stock," Li said.

Currently the number of newly confirmed cases and deaths in South Asia and South East Asia on a daily basis has accounted for nearly half of the global total, according to media reports.

A total of 201,420 new confirmed cases and 4,120 new deaths were reported in eight countries in South and Southeast Asia on Saturday, accounting for 41.9 percent and 39.2 percent of the global totals, respectively.