Nafed selling the commodity at Rs 35-40/kg to provide relief to the common man.
A day after onion prices shot up in the national capital and neighboring areas due to reduced supplies, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar on Tuesday said that it will take two-three weeks for the onion prices to come down. The government, however, asserted that it has no plans to import onions as of now as that might inflate prices further due to increased hoarding and speculation.
However traders did import consignments from Pakistan as wholesale rates at the biggest producing centre Nashik crossed Rs 70 a kg.
“Onion prices will remain high for the next two-three weeks and the situation is likely to improve only after that. Because of heavy rains in Nashik area substantial quantity of onion has been damaged. Our expectation is that with the arrival from Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh in the next few weeks, prices will come down”, Pawar said.
Meanwhile, an emergency meeting called upon by the agriculture ministry and the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation Of India (Nafed) decided to suspend onion exports till mid January and increase the Minimum Export price ( MEP ) to stabilize domestic prices. Nafed and National Cooperative Consumers Federation of India (NCCF) have also released onions from 25 retail stores at almost half the current market price of Rs 35-40 a kg in Delhi and the National Capital Region to ease supplies.
“We hope the impact, the voluntary suspension of exports, raising of MEP and retail sales by Nafed and NCCF will definitely lead to a correction in prices. We cannot understand reasons for the price rise because there is no major damage of crops,” said Sanjeev Chopra, Misson director, National Horticulture Mission (NHM) in the Ministry of Agriculture. Chopra is also the Managing Director of Nafed.
The Agriculture Ministry further in a press release stated that onion prices , following the steps taken by the government, have declined by 35 per cent and 13 per cent respectively in Nashik (Maharashtra) mandies and Azadpur (New Delhi) mandi while arrivals also picked up marginally.
Yesterday, Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma as well as Nafed Managing Director Sanjeev Chopra had attributed the sudden rise in onion prices to hoarding and speculations. Meanwhile, some traders in north India have started importing onions from neighbouring country Pakistan. As many as 13 truck loads (5 to 15 tonnes per truck) of onion have arrived from Pakistan, a senior official of Customs department in Amritsar had said yesterday.
The landed cost of onion from Pakistan stood at Rs 18-20 a kg.
Pawar highlighted the steps taken by the government to control prices such as suspension of exports till January 15 and more than doubling minimum export price of onion to $1,200 a tonne from $525 a tonne.
“Ban on onion exports should help reduce the prices,” he said.
Onion production stood at around 12 million tonnes in 2009-10 fiscal, out of which 1.9 million tonnes were exported.
In 2010-11, production in the kharif season is estimated at five million tonnes.
Low supplies
Onion supplies further dropped by about 20 per cent in wholesale markets of the national Capital on Tuesday, but a fall in demand kept the prices at Rs 60 a kg, little changed from previous day.
Against arrival of around 1,020 tonnes of onion yesterday, supply slid to nearly 810 tonnes on Tuesday in the Azadpur market (the Asia’s biggest fruit & vegetables market), the General Secretary of Onion and Tomato Merchants Association, Rajendra Sharma, told PTI. There has been a drop in the supply of onion in the last 24 hours in Ghazipur vegetables market too.
High prices in Pak too
Rising import of onion by India has flared up prices of the commodity in Pakistan by 25-30 per cent, which would jack up the cost of new import orders from India, traders said on Tuesday.
“Because of increased import by India, the rates of onion in the domestic markets of Pakistan have also shot up in the range of 25-30 per cent. And these new rates will have bearing on new import orders,” Amritsar-based vegetable trader Rajdeep Uppal told PTI.
Vegetable traders imported onion at $400 a tonne (around Rs 18,000 a tonne) from Sindh provision in Pakistan. “The size of crop in Pakistan is also not very huge ... therefore rising demand from India has pushed up the rates, which will result in higher payment for imported onion,” he said.
