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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Ban on onion export, off wheat

Ban on onion export, off wheat

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published Published on Sep 9, 2011   modified Modified on Sep 9, 2011

-The Telegraph

 

The Centre tonight banned onion exports to check rising retail prices, re-imposing the curbs only six months after it lifted them following a dip.

At the same time, it lifted four-year restrictions on overseas sale of wheat and non-basmati rice to ease storage problems following record production last season.

“Onion exports have been banned with immediate effect. The ban will be reviewed on a fortnightly basis,” food minister K.V. Thomas said after a meeting of a ministerial panel headed by finance minister Pranab Mukherjee.

Governments have been voted out over high onion prices. The Congress-led UPA, wary of a repeat of last year’s crisis when prices of the politically sensitive kitchen staple topped Rs 90 a kg and prompted the last ban, does not want to take chances before next year’s Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Uttarakhand polls.

Onion prices have increased to Rs 25 per kg in retail markets in recent weeks from Rs 15 per kg a month ago because of erratic supplies.

Food inflation numbers for the week ended August 27 showed onion prices rising 42.03 per cent year-on-year and potato by 13.38 per cent, though the overall figure for all items dipped to 9.55 per cent from over 10 per cent the week before. Pulses and wheat became less expensive.

The ban was clamped by the ministerial committee a day after the directorate-general of foreign trade, a government agency under the commerce ministry, raised the minimum export price (MEP) for onions to $475 from $300 per tonne in an attempt to discourage exports.

The hike in the minimum export price, the fourth since June 18, followed fears of sharper increases in retail rates because of a delay in sowing of the crop in Maharashtra, which is the country’s largest onion-growing state, and reports of hoarding by farmers, trade analysts said.

Food minister Thomas had said after reviewing onion prices earlier this week that the National Agricultural Co-operative Marketing Federation (Nafed) and National Co-operative Consumer Federation of India (NCCF) would sell the vegetable at Rs 20 per kg through their retail outlets in Delhi.

“State governments have also been asked to undertake such market-intervention measures through their agencies,” an official statement had said.

On wheat and non-basmati rice, the ministers’ committee decided to allow exports of two million tonnes of each item. Their prices have remained relatively stable and the government is grappling with storage problems on the back of record grain production. A government official hinted at another reason. “The international prices of wheat are going up. So there should be some exports,” he said.

In early July, the panel had given in-principle approval for wheat exports but did not decide the quantity as global prices were low then.

India is estimated to have harvested a record 85.93 million tonnes (mt) of wheat and 95.32 mt of rice in the 2010-11 crop season (July-June). Wheat export was banned in early 2007 to augment buffer stock when the output had fallen. Now, government godowns are overflowing.

The Telegraph, 9 September, 2011, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1110909/jsp/nation/story_14484657.jsp


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