The Government monitors the Wholesale/Retail prices of select essential commodities which include vegetables like potato, onion and tomato through data obtained from 57 Reporting Centres across the country on a continuous basis.
The prevailing price situation as well as other factors which have impact on prices both in domestic and international markets are analysed, and based on this decisions are taken to contain price rise.
This information was given by the Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, Prof. K.V. Thomas in a written reply in RajyaSabha on December 06, 2013.
He further said that the government has taken a number of measures to contain the price rise of fruits and vegetables which are as follows:
· States/UTs have been addressed at intervals to ensure steady supply of onion into the market and to take other measures to control price rise.
· Export of onion is calibrated through Minimum Export Price (MEP). MEP of onion was re-imposed to USD 650 per metric tonne w.e.f. 14.08.2013. It was further raised to USD 900 per metric tonne w.e.f 19.9.2013 and to USD 1150 per metric tonne w.e.f. 1.11.2013.
· Quantity of 80, 41,379 kgs of onion has been imported during 01.09.2013– 13.11.2013 from Afghanistan, China, Egypt, Pakistan and Thailand.
· In order to address the problem of storage, National Horticulture Mission (NHM), among its schemes, is facilitating creation of infrastructure for post-harvest management and marketing. In order to improve the availability of vegetables, Government initiated schemes like Vegetable Initiative for Urban Clusters (VIUC) under the aegis of Rashtriya Krishi VikasYojana (RKVY) with the objective to address concerns related to both demand and supply side of the vegetable sector in selected cities.
