Onion price to rise in West Bengal

Onion prices may rise further in West Bengal. The onion retail price touched Rs 100 a kg on Wednesday (October 28) across city markets with demand-supply gap widening fast. 

Kamal Dey, a member of the task force formed to curb the price of daily necessities in the state, said, “There is no possibility of reducing the price of onion in the state right now.”

“The Centre must release onion from its 82,000 tonnes buffer stock for Bengal. They are selectively releasing it for Delhi and poll-bound Bihar. Unless the onion from the buffer stock with NAFED comes to Bengal, the price is unlikely to drop,” he added.

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Wholesale onion price, though, was kept at Rs 2,600 per 40kg bag in the markets, retailers said they bought the vegetable at Rs 3,500-3,600 per bag (Rs 90 per kg), which forced them to raise retail price to Rs 100 a kg.

Cleaner and better quality onions are there in the markets but older stocks of inferior quality are also available at a lower price. However, even the onions of inferior quality are being sold at Rs 80-Rs 85 a kg. A potato-onion retailer said the prices may rise further unless the state intervenes like what has always happened in the past.

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People complained that the inferior quality of onions is mostly rotten from inside and this is a sign of the fact that the vegetables had been lying in stores for long and were brought for clearance since fresh stocks arrived.

Two of the big wholesale markets in the city, Posta and Koley Market, on Wednesday (October 28) received one-twentieth of its usual daily supply of onion from Nashik.
 

• onion
• price hike
• bjp
• west bengal