The Department of Consumer Affairs has directed the National Cooperative Consumers' Federation of India Limited (NCCF) and the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Ltd (NAFED) to sell tomatoes at the retail price of Rs 50 per kg from August 15, as tomato prices decline in the wholesale market.
From July 14 to August 13, around 1.5 million kilograms of tomatoes have been procured by the NCCF and NAFED and sold to retail consumers in major cities, including Delhi-NCR, Rajasthan (Jaipur, Kota), Uttar Pradesh (Lucknow, Kanpur, Varanasi, Prayagraj) and Bihar (Patna, Muzaffarpur, Arrah, Buxar).
The two agencies had initially fixed the price of tomatoes at Rs 90 per kg before reducing it to Rs 80 per kg (July 16 onwards) and then Rs 70 per kg from July 20
The NCCF has placed mobile vans across 70 locations all over Delhi and 15 locations in Noida and Greater Noida to supply the crop to retail consumers. NCCF has also conducted sales through the open network for digital commerce (ONDC) platform.