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Onion prices soar, to remain high till Oct
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Quaid Najmi and Fakir Balaji | 03 Aug, 2015
Unseasonal rains, lower production and resultant shortages have made the
onion dearer again, with prices soaring. Merchants say the prices will
remain high till October when the next crop reaches markets across the
country.
Of the 20 million tonnes produced last fiscal (2014-15),
about 30-35 percent was damaged in unexpected rains from February to
April after the January-March) crop was harvested, an apex trade body
said.
"The damage was compounded by high moisture content, change
in seasonal cropping patterns due to soil conditions and other
factors," a leading wholesale onion merchant in Navi Mumbai, Rajeev
Maniar, told IANS.
As a result, the bulb price has shot up 50-60
percent in wholesale and retail markets in states despite belated
measures by the union agriculture ministry to increase supply by
importing about 10,000 tonnes from Pakistan, China, Egypt and other
countries.
Fearing a crisis, the Director General of Foreign
Trade increased the minimum export price (MEP) on onion to $425 per
tonne from $250 in June to curb its export, ensure enough supply and
check prices from spiralling.
"Failure of the authorities in
building up adequate stocks to make up for short supply and delay in
limiting exports are reasons for onion price going up around this time
every year," said Srinivasa Gowda, a wholesale dealer in onions and
potatoes at the Bengaluru agriculture marketing yard.
The
National Agriculture Cooperating Marketing Federation, a state-supported
non-profit apex body of farmers, has arranged to supply onions to more
consuming states in northern and eastern regions from producing states
like Maharashtra, Karnataka, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh.
"The
prices have been gradually rising and touched 50 percent in the Mumbai
wholesale market - from Rs.22 to Rs.32 a kg, and doubled to Rs.42-45 a
kg in retail market depending on quality," Maniar said.
The cooperative federation Markfed has procured about 2,500 tonnes of onion using the corpus of the price stability fund.
Though
India is the world's second largest onion producer after China, its
yield is lowest per acre at 14 tonne per hectare as against 22 in China,
23 in Mynmar and 30 in Turkey, according to the Agricultural and
Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (Apeda).
"Absence
of timely market intervention and a mechanism to regulate supplies
makes farmers and traders hoard the vegetable during summer and cause
scarcity to jack up its prices till the next crop is harvested," Gowda
told IANS.
Huge quantities of onion are sourced from Lasalgaon
and Pimpalgaon villages in Nashik district. They account for the largest
crop production in Maharashtra.
Maharashtra alone contributes 40 percent to the national onion basket.
With
a third of the stock damaged due to moisture, the 50 onion markets of
the total 232 APMC markets across Maharashtra have no stocks currently.
In
producing states, onion price shot up during July -- 37 percent in
Gujarat, 36 percent in Andhra Pradesh, 32 percent in Madhya Pradesh and
17 percent in the National Capital Region (NCR).
Price of large
onions ranged from Rs.2,800 to Rs.5,000 per quintal (100kg) across the
country on August 1, as per the agriculture ministry's directorate of
marketing and inspection.
In Uttar Pradesh, the price doubled to
Rs.40 a kg from Rs.20 a year ago. Absence of rains in many parts of the
state during the last fortnight also led to prices of many vegetables
soaring 50-100 percent.
In Karnataka, the second largest producer, onion price doubled to Rs.50-55 from Rs.25-30 a kg in the last one month.
This
was primarily because supplies from the state's northern region and
Maharashtra dwindled due to stock diversion to northern and eastern
states facing shortage, a horticulture department official told IANS.
According
to Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) estimates, supply
will ease only by October when the next crop will be able to meet the
demand expected in the coming festival season.
(With inputs from Arvind Padmanabhan in Delhi and Mohit Dubey in Lucknow)
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Customs Exchange Rates |
Currency |
Import |
Export |
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As on 13 Aug, 2022 |
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