Mumbai : There is a sharp decline of onion arrivals at the Vashi APMC and the prices might sore by about 10-12% by next week, traders have said.
“Normally we have a daily intake of on an average 125-150 truck load of onion between June and September. But, the arrivals are rapidly going down. This week there has been an intake of only around 80 trucks every day,” Ashok Valunj, senior onion trader and former director of the market committee, told FPJ. He also warned that the trend might continue if no concrete steps are taken by the government.
The decreased arrivals have sky-rocketed the wholesale prices of onion from around Rs 25 to over Rs 45, which means that at the retail markets they would be sold anywhere between Rs 50 to Rs 70.
“The untimely rains and hailstorm has hit the stored onion yield in the worst manner and farmers are left with very little stock is what we can interpret from the decreased arrival,” Valunj said.
Lasalgaon in Nashik district is known as the biggest market of onion. But, that too is facing similar crisis and there also onion arrivals have reduced to almost 50%, market experts say. The other major onion growing state is Karnataka, which is also facing drought.
The average yield of onion across the country is around 190 lakh tonnes. Fifty per cent of this is Rabi crop while 20% is early Kharif and roughly 30% is late Kharif. Of the Rabi crop, 50% is stored in Maharashtra to be brought to markets between June and September. According to the National Horticultural Research and Development Foundation (NHRDF) report, this year the state had around 14 lakh tonnes of onion stored by the farmers. But, almost 50% of that has already been sold at the markets.
“Farmers, alarmed by the bad weather, tried to sell out the onion earlier. In addition to this, some of the onion was destroyed by untimely rains,” Valunj said.
Worried by the sky-rocketing prices of onion, the Union government has decided to import 10,000 metric tonnes of onion from abroad. The PSU MMTC has been asked to float a global tender to import 10,000 tonnes. It is likely to import onion from Pakistan and China.
But, Valunj says that the government should intervene right at the storage of onion to ensure steady supply.
“Sharad Pawar, some 20 years back, had conceived the idea of allowing the farmers to store onions in structures called ‘chawl’s. The State government also gives grants for developing these structures. But, the spell of bad weather has exposed the soft belly. So the government needs to take steps to ensure credible storage facilities. That would be a long term solution to the problem,” Valunj said.
Abhijit Mulye
