The Department of Food and Public Distribution on Friday said recent interventions taken by the Government will help cooling down commodity prices such as edible oils further in the coming days.

The department also hopes that key oilseeds and oil-producing States will begin imposing stock limits from next week, which will further help cooling down edible oil prices giving relief to consumers in the festival season. The Centre believes that mustard oil prices are also expected to cool down with the arrival of fresh crop in February.

Addressing reporters, Food and Public Distribution Secretary Sudhanshu Pandey said the Centre has taken a slew of measures such as rationalisation of import duties, suspension of future trading in mustard oil on NCDEX and imposition of stock limits on edible oils and edible oilseeds to ease prices of edible oils in recent times.

Referring to high edible oil prices in the global market, Pandey said, “The intervention of the Centre along with the proactive involvement of the State governments has lead to cooling down effect on prices in India much more than international markets”

Onion prices

Meanwhile, responding to queries on retail prices of onions, Pandey said, “Onion prices are not extraordinarily high. The average prices are lower than last year.” He said State governments are of the view that there is not much possibility of sharp increase in the coming days.

He said a record 2 lakh tonnes of onion buffer stock had been created and the Centre is providing onions to States at subsidised rates from the stock to boost availability. He said kharif onion production is expected to be higher by 7-8 lakh tonnes this year and it will help further to cool down onion prices in the coming days.

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