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The government on Wednesday said the restrictions on stock holding of onions, whose production has been hit by 26 per cent due to rain damage, would remain till further orders even though it was making all-out efforts to get the bulb from other countries at the earliest.
The increasing prices of onions is a concern for the Central government which is closely monitoring the situation with a team of five Ministers led by the Home Minister.
The committee has already held one meeting and another one will be held very soon, said Food and Consumer Affairs Minister Ram Vilas Paswan at a press conference here. He also said that the Cabinet Secretary and a Committee of Secretaries are also keeping a close eye on the price and availability and suitable policy interventions are being made.
According to Paswan, there was a 26 per cent decline in domestic production of onions due to adverse weather conditions. The delay in the onset of monsoon initially delayed the sowing, but untimely rains and cyclones led to severe crop damage, As the buffer stock of 57,000 tonnes has already been liquidated, the government is resorting to imports.
The Minister said the onion cultivation season had mostly concluded across the world except in Turkey and Holland and the government is taking all efforts to get stocks from these countries.
Meanwhile, at an inter-ministerial meeting chaired by the Department of Consumer Affairs Secretary AK Srivastava it was decided that Srivastava would write to Chief Secretaries of all States asking them to suitably reduce the stock limits further as per availability and prices. They have also been asked to strictly enforce these stock limits and inform the Centre on a weekly basis.
The stock limit for wholesale traders is 50 tonnes and retail traders 10 tonnes
The officials of state-run MMTC, which has been tasked with onion imports from the countries like Egypt, Germany and Turkey, informed the meeting that the first shipment of onions from Egypt is expected by second week of December.
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