Mother Dairy, which sells fresh vegetables and fruits under the brand Safal, has acceded to the Department of Consumer Affairs’ request to trim onion prices by ₹2/kg in the capital, where the prices of the kitchen staple has suddenly gone up.

To check rising onion prices, the Centre also directed the co-operative Nafed (National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India) to boost supplies in Delhi from the buffer stock to tide over any constraints in the interim supply of the bulb.

Currently, retail onion prices in Delhi are ruling in the range of ₹30-40 a kg on tight supplies, as per the trade data.

Rising prices

“The Department of Consumer Affairs advised Mother Dairy to roll back the prices of onions by ₹2 across all variants. Mother Dairy agreed to reduce these rates from ₹25.90 to ₹23.90 for the loose variant and from ₹27.90 to ₹25.90 for the packed variant at all its stores in Delhi,” the department said in an official release on Friday. According to traders at Azadpur vegetable market, wholesale prices of the bulb shot up by ₹7-10 in the last 10 days, leading to corresponding increase in retail prices, just ahead of Diwali.

The meeting, chaired by the Department Secretary Avinash K Srivastava, also assured consumers that the situation was being monitored constantly and quick action will be initiated if needed.

Higher kharif output

Meanwhile, the Horticulture Commissioner informed the meeting that there was no need to panic as the area under onion cultivation during the kharif season is higher than last year and fresh arrivals have already commenced from Karnataka.

According to the 3rd advance estimates of horticultural produce released by the Agriculture Ministry in August this year, onion production in 2017-18 was projected to be 22.07 million tonnes.

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