With onion prices showing no signs of decline, the Modi Government on Friday brainstormed over the issue to get to the root cause of the problem which is giving sleepless nights to people.
The Home Minister Amit Shah on Friday chaired a meeting of Price Stabilization Management Committee (PSMC) involving all stakeholders to discuss the strategies to cool down onion prices. Union Ministers Ram Vilas Paswan, Piyush Goyal and Narendra Singh Tomar and senior officials of ministries and intelligence agencies were also present.
Currently, retail onion prices across the country have been hovering around Rs 80 to Rs 90 per kg, even crossing the Rs 100-mark in some places. The wholesale onion price has increased to Rs 79.50 per kg at Lasalgaon and Rs 82 per kg at Pimpalgaon in Maharashtra on Friday. Daily onion arrivals have dipped to barely 10-15 percent of arrivals a year ago. Traders say the situation is expected to remain till December end due to shortage of onion.
Onion prices have come under pressure due to 26 per cent fall in the production to 52.06 lakh tonnes during the kharif output late-kharif seasons of 2019-20. The Government is also facilitating private imports and also relaxed phytosanitary and fumigation norms till December. PSMC reviews prices of essential commodities whenever they shoot up and figures out the reason behind the surge and then decides on measures to be taken to rein them in. Since August, these officials have become a regular fixture at the meetings of the government's PSMC Officials of intelligence, enforcement and income tax department work in tandem with the agriculture, commerce and consumer affairs ministries to ensure that onion prices are kept under check.
The central Government has been holding regular meetings on ways to check the rise in the price of onions. The Union Cabinet had on Wednesday approved import of 1.2 lakh metric tonnes onion in view of high prices of the essential commodity in the market.The Government has been trying to tackle the issue since August when prices first touched Rs 40 per kg.