Onion price in Karnataka shoots up by Rs 40-50

Onion prices have soared across the State with the price per kilogram of the staple vegetable sold at Rs 60 to Rs 80 at places where they were otherwise sold at Rs 20 to Rs 30 per kg.

Traders associations attributed the price rise to the floods in Maharashtra and parts of north Karnataka, where the crops have been badly damaged or washed away.

The maximum price of onion that was Rs 30 per kg till the first half of the September. It has now doubled at Rs 60/kg that is expected to increase by the month of November as the supply of onion to the city is twice the low than last year.

Traders said that the price of onion at street markets may jump to shoot up to Rs 80/kg in coming days. More worryingly, the traders said the price may remain the same till the next monsoon.

According to Onion and Potato Traders’ Association, the supply of onion is registered around 50,000 bags a day against 1.5 lakh bags a day in previous years. The city which used to witness about thousand trucks a day carrying onion have been reduced to just about 150 due to production fall.

B L Shankarappa, president, Onion and Potato Traders’ Association said, “The prices are doubled since a week due to low production. We were receiving more and best quality of onion from Nasik, Pune and surrounding districts which have not been able to produce due to floods. Even districts like Chitradurga, Hubballi, Vijayapura and Kalaburagi which used to manage to dispatch about 150 truck each a day are not transporting onion as there is no production from them,” he said.

The city received about 35,000 bags of onion in the last week, however, the price remained at Rs 30 as those bags were more utilised for domestic consumption. Currently, the price has shot up though the supply is marked at 50,000 bags due to exporting of onion being involved. Shankarappa further said, “Currently the supply also has to be exported. Thus the price has again shot up. The price will increase by November again as we are not even able to import onion from Pakistan now,” he said.

According to the estimates, a truck can carry about 250-300 bags of onion in which each bag would carry about 50-60 kg of onion. However, the traders believe that the situation of onion price will reflect on the entire country in the coming days.