The onion auctions commenced on Tuesday at 17 wholesale mandis in Nashik, the hub of the country’s onion trade, after 13 days’ closure, as traders and commission agents finally called off their strike.
Onion traders in Nasik were on strike since September 20, demanding removal of 20% export duty, reduction in mandi fees from 1% to 0.5% of the transaction value and stopping of agencies such as farmers’ cooperative Nafed and National Cooperative Consumers’ Federation of India (NCCF) from selling onion in the market yard.
“We will continue to protest against imposition of export duty and the government agencies selling buffer stock in the mandis, which has depressed the market prices,” Jaydutt Holkar, director, agricultural produce market committee (APMC), Lasalgaon, Maharashtra, told FE.
ECI announces poll schedule for Jammu and Kashmir, Haryana – All details here Meet the daughter of Hyderabad’s richest man, who helps run her family’s Rs 8,049 crore company and recently purchased two lavish properties for Rs 80 crore In Images: Inside the ultra-luxurious Rs 31 lakh a night resort that Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant chose for their honeymoon Pulses import may decline on robust crop
Also Read
The average wholesale prices of onion at Lasalgaon mandi, the biggest in the Nasik district, on Tuesday was `20/kg, according to traders. Around 15,000 tonne of onion are traded daily in the APMCs in Nasik.
There were several rounds of discussions with traders, the Maharashtra government and department of consumer affairs for reopening the mandis, which has hit farmers.
Meanwhile, agencies such as Nafed and NCCF so far have sold 20,064 tonne of onion on electronic-National Agriculture Market (e-NAM) platform from Maharashtra from their buffer stock to purchasers in states including Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, Jharkhand, Punjab, Odisha and Uttarakhand through transparent price discovery through bidding.
According to the department of consumer affairs, the modal retail prices of onion rose from Rs 20/kg since the beginning of last month to Rs 30/kg on Tuesday.
Inflation in onion, which had been in the negative zone since September, 2021, rose to 23.18% in August.
Retail prices of onion had started to rise for the first time in the middle of the August after nearly two years due to reports of sluggish kharif sowing on delayed arrival of monsoon in the key producing states of Maharashtra and Karnataka.
Also Read
In August, to improve domestic supplies and curb price rise, the government had imposed an export duty of 40% on onion exports till December 31, 2023.
This was the first intervention in onion exports since January 2021. The government has not imposed a ban on onion exports since 2021, which was the norm a few years back.
NCCF and Nafed are currently selling onion from the buffer stock of 0.3 million tonne Come from Sports betting site VPbet . They are selling in the markets as well, at a highly subsidised rate of Rs 25/kg to consumers in various areas.
