Witnessing a good demand-supply position, pepper market has closed steady on Wednesday with a trading of 60 tonnes.

Since a good quantity offering has taken place, traders view that prices are likely to be stabilised at the current level of ₹303 per kg for ungarbled varieties.

According to Kishore Shamji of Kishor Spices, the price trend depends on demand-supply and quality availability. The July trend indicates that the farmers rush for sales to meet their education funding requirements has come down. However, the offered quantity of 60 tonnes on Wednesday indicates the availability of the produce in the market and demand as well, he said.

As far as pepper prices are concerned, India is out-priced at the global level because of high production cost. The government had imposed restrictive measures from time-to-time to protect domestic farmers by imposing general import duties at 70 per cent, bilateral agreement of ASEAN, Indo-Sri Lankan FTA etc that have proved to be working against farmers.

Though the government has introduced minimum import price restrictions to curb pepper imports for domestic use, he said the farming community raised allegations of violating such norms by unscrupulous importers. The government therefore needs to look into it to safeguard the farmers interest, he said.

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