After Tomatoes, Now Onions Becomes Dearer

After tomatoes steep price rise in the market, its now onion turn to make a hole in your pocket. The cost of one kilogram of onion was trading at an average price of Rs 23 in Maharashtra’s Lasalgaon wholesale market, which is Asia’s largest wholesale market for bulb crop. Lasalgaon is the important player as the fluctuation here is seen other mandis across India.

The steep rise in the prices can be the result of Reserve Bank of India (RBI) cut its benchmark repo lending rate by .25 percent points to 6 percent. Like in the case of tomatoes, the spike in onion prices has been sudden.

What shocking is the fact that price rise is steep even after registering the record 22,000 quintals of onions arrival on Thursday, compared to 13,000 quintals in the preceding two days.  As August is the Sharwan month in the Hindu calendar, the consumption of onion supposed to be low.

The existing demand is met through old rabi stocks, which has started depleting, owing to exports and limited supplies from Madhya Pradesh in view of state government buying, he said.

That apart, new crop from Kharif season of 2017-18 is also expected to be less, as acreage is seen down by 30-40 per cent in states, especially in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra due to less and late rains besides low prices ruling at the time of sowing.

The arrival of early Kharif crop has begun in Andhra Pradesh. But, the full swing arrival of Kharif crop would begin from September onwards. Till then, the pressure on availability and prices would continue, agri-experts added.

About 30-40 per cent of the country’s total production comes from the Kharif season and the rest of rabi season