People formed long queues on Sunday to buy low-costing onions from makeshift truck shops of Trading Corporation of Bangladesh (TCB), fearing a supply shortage during the 18-party alliance’s 60-hour hartal.
Rasheda, a private job holder who stood in line near the National Press club, said she had no other choice but to buy onions from the TCB’s open market sale (OMS), as the price was half compared to the kitchen markets.
The fear of supply shortage at the start of the shutdown may have also caused the long queues in front of the TCB makeshift shops, she said.
Kitchen markets sold onions on Sunday between Tk105 and Tk110 for each kilogram, while TCB charged Tk65 per kg at its OMS shops.
Nazrul Islam, an onion trader at Shantinagar bazar, said onion prices will definitely increase in the first week of December, during a gap in local onion harvest.
On Friday, India raised its export price for every tonne of onion from $900 to $1,150, in a bid to rein in prices in its domestic market, said a notification from the neighbouring country’s Ministry of Commerce and Industry.
A senior official at Bangladesh’s commerce ministry, seeking anonymity, told the Dhaka Tribune: “We have already taken all-out efforts to keep the price of onion down in the local market, while onions stored by TCB will remain for 15 days”.
The official also said the ministry had already sent three TCB officials to the Hili, Sona Masjid and Bhomra land ports to buy onion at any price necessary from onion-laden trucks coming from India.
Assuring that local onion prices would not be influenced by changes to Indian onion prices, the official also said monitoring will be beefed up at the kitchen markets.
Earlier, local onion importers assured the commerce ministry that prices of onion will decrease within two weeks, despite the price hike of Indian onions.
Bangladesh produces about 1.4m tonnes of onion annually against the demand for 2m tonnes. The country imports 20% of its onion demands from India each year.