Prepare to shed onion tears till end-November
NEW DELHI: Festivals, an early monsoon, a late-running monsoon,
hoarding, irregular supply, crop failure, Phailin blocking supplies —
the reasons are a dime a dozen, but the price of onions is not about to
come down in a hurry. Unless you are in Punjab, which is paying around
R50 a kg, thanks to imports from Afghanistan.
Patna and Bhopal top the ‘onion tears’ chart, with a retail price of ` 100 a kg. The four metros are not much better off — the average price being ` 80 a kg.
Even the ‘ onion belt’ of Karnataka and Maharashtra are paying through their noses. The late monsoon has all but destroyed the October harvest. The next one is due in mid-November.
In Kolkata, the spells of rain have sent vegetable prices soaring and onion prices have remained at the highs they have hit in the city’s markets since July, at and above ` 70 a kg. At retail markets of Jadubabur Bazar, Kasba, Howrah and Bally, this was the price that ruled. “We don’t foresee any change in onion prices in the short term,” Shibu Kundu, a vegetable vendor at Jadubabur Bazar, said.
In Maharashtra’s Nashik division, which supplies the biggest chunk
of the crop, the sowing is usually done over 34,000 hectares. But this
year, it was just 27,000 hectares. On Tuesday, the country’s biggest
onion market, Lasalgaon in Nashik, received merely 1,500 quintal of
onions instead of the average 25,000-30,000 quintals, Maharashtra’s
agriculture and marketing minister Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil said.
Patna and Bhopal top the ‘onion tears’ chart, with a retail price of ` 100 a kg. The four metros are not much better off — the average price being ` 80 a kg.
Even the ‘ onion belt’ of Karnataka and Maharashtra are paying through their noses. The late monsoon has all but destroyed the October harvest. The next one is due in mid-November.
In Kolkata, the spells of rain have sent vegetable prices soaring and onion prices have remained at the highs they have hit in the city’s markets since July, at and above ` 70 a kg. At retail markets of Jadubabur Bazar, Kasba, Howrah and Bally, this was the price that ruled. “We don’t foresee any change in onion prices in the short term,” Shibu Kundu, a vegetable vendor at Jadubabur Bazar, said.
Consumers point fingers at profiteering. In the face of allegations, Patil has ordered a field assessment of all major onion-producing regions — Pune, Nashik and Ahmednagar. “It would help us to determine extent of the damage,” Patil said.
Karnataka, which grows onions in Bidar, Gulbarga, Chitradurga, Chikkamagaluru, Haveri and Belgaum districts, offers some hopes of a respite. The new crop will be ready by end-October and supply to various APMCs will begin. “This time, the yield is good and there won’t be any shortage from November,” Gangadhar Walikar, office-bearer of the Onion Growers’ Association of Gulbarga district, said.
TANU PGDM-1
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