Mandis in Nashik district of Maharashtra, the hub of the country’s onion production and trade, reopened on Thursday after three days as traders protested against the imposition of export duty.
However, auctions at the agricultural produce market committees (APMCs) in Lasalgaon and Pimpalgaon were stopped after the farmers did not get the rate of `2,410 per quintal as announced by the government on Tuesday.
Union food and consumer affairs minister Piyush Goyal had promised to procure 0.2 million tonne (MT) of onions from farmers at a rate of 2,410/quintal, which is higher than the prevailing mandi price of2,000/quintal, as it sought to help farmers hit by the prohibitive 40% export tax on the vegetable.
The government had directed the National Cooperative Consumers Federation of India (NCCF) and the farmers’ cooperative Nafed to purchase an additional 0.2 MT of onions from farmers in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh over the next few weeks as part of the creation of 0.5 MT buffer stock.
A mandi official from Lasalgaon said that the farmers stopped the auction since personnel from NAFED or NCCF were absent during the auctions.
Onion exports rose by more than 26% to 0.63 MT during April-June of 2023-24 compared to the corresponding period of previous fiscal, prompting the government to impose export duty till December 31, 2023.This is the first such intervention in onion exports since January 2021.
Inflation in onion, which had been in the negative zone since September 2021, rose to 11.72% in July.
According to the Centre, the modal retail prices of onions rose from `20/kg at the beginning of the year, to Rs 32/kg on Thursday.
Retail prices of onions have started to rise in the last couple of weeks after a gap of nearly two years over the reports of sluggish kharif sowing, which was affected by delayed arrival of monsoon in the key producing states of Maharashtra and Karnataka.