Union consumer affairs secretary Rohit Kumar Singh has pressed cooperative bodies – National Cooperative Consumers' Federation of India (NCCF) and the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (NAFED) – into action for cooling down the rising onion prices.
In Rajasthan, these two cooperative bodies are providing onions at less than half the market price. The market price of onion in Rajasthan is around Rs 65-70 a kg.
The central government is running mobile vans in Jaipur, Bikaner, Alwar and Kota among other cities to provide onions at Rs 25 a kg. They are giving maximum of 5 kg onions per person.
For the fiscal year 2023-24, the Consumer Affairs Ministry has maintained a buffer onion stock of 5 lakh tonnes. Simultaneously, the ministry has made provisions to procure an additional 2 lakh tonnes of onions in the short term.
“ We have been offloading buffer onions since mid-August and we are stepping up the retail sale in order to check further rise in prices and provide relief to the consumers,” Consumer Affairs Secretary Rohit Kumar Singh has informed.
A couple of days back, the government had imposed Minimum Export Price of USD 800/ton on Onion with effect from 29th October 2023 till 31stDecember 2023 to discourage exports and maintain availability in domestic markets.
The Department of Consumer Affairs is monitoring onion exports and prices on daily basis to ensure stable domestic prices and availability to consumers.
In view of increasing demand in the month of November,the department has started releasing onion buffer stock into the market both through mandi sale and discounted sale to retail consumers at centers of high prices. This includes retail sale through 685 Mobile retail outlets covering over 170 cities.
Vivek Shukla is a management graduate who has worked in corporate worked for 20 years and is now pursuing his passion — news.
