Earlier this year Bangladesh's agriculture ministry declared that the country had surpassed all previous records in onion production, hitting a 3.3 million tons in production in 2020-21 - a record 27% surge over what was the spice's previous fiscal yield.
Officials claimed on record that relegating the United States a spot behind, Bangladesh had now emerged as the world's 3rd largest producer of onions after China and India.
A production of 3.3 million tons of onions should've well met Bangladesh's yearly onion demand - that's well below three million tons.
Ironically, in this month of April when most onion farmers in Bangladesh are at the height of their harvesting season, the government still keeps the import line open and is continuing to provide the importers and traders a duty-cut facility to import the root crop from India.
What are the consequences?
Farmers are now complaining of not getting fair prices against the good onion harvest they have got this season and questioning the rationale of importing onions from India during the peak domestic harvest season.
On his recent visits to some of the key onion growing regions, Agriculture Minister Dr Muhammad Abdur Razzauqe had to face farmers’ complaints against low price offers due to a market glut by cheaper imports.
Razzaque, however, passed the buck on to the media by asking what possibly a government could do other than keeping import lines open with the media becoming so critical about high commodity prices.
But official records show it was the commerce ministry that proposed long before the advent of the Muslims' holy month of Ramadan that onion import should continue till the coming Eid. And the agriculture ministry also agreed to that proposal.
If the commodity price status provided by the state-run Trading Corporation of Bangladesh (TCB) is something to go by, the prices of onions have witnessed a great fall from Tk45 a kilogram in early March to Tk25 a kilogram now.
Agriculture Minister Dr Muhammad Abdur Razzaque inspecting an onion seed production plot in Faridpur's Gobindaganj on Thursday, April 7, 2022 Ministry of AgricultureOnion farmers in Faridpur and Rajbari told the agriculture minister in the last two days that they were not at all enthusiastic about the price offers they were getting for the new harvest. They demanded the government halt imports from India and develop storage facilities for the perishable spice.
Market sources fear low price offers may act as a disincentive for onion growers who've so far helped Bangladesh advance its goal to attain self-sufficiency in onion production.
An IFPRI (International Food Policy Research Institute) study, carried out sometime ago by Akhter Ahmed and Ahmed Kaikaus (the latter is currently principal secretary to Bangladesh prime minister) had identified import dependency as a barrier for Bangladesh's onion yield to thrive. They recommended for long term plan to reduce import dependency and incentivize domestic onion production.
