Onion prices experienced a fresh hike after the government stopped issuing import permits to protect the interest of local growers.
According to market insiders, the price of the popular cooking herb increased by Tk20-25 per kg in the kitchen markets of the capital.
According to the state-owned organization Trading Corporation of Bangladesh (TCB) data, the local variant of onion is being sold at Tk50 per kg, which was Tk30-35 last week, and Tk25-30 last month.
The imported variant is being sold at Tk40-50 per kg, which was at Tk25-30 per kg last week, and Tk25 last month, showed the TCB data.
However, consumers said that some sellers are asking for far more, claiming that there is a crisis of the onion in the local market.
Sources from Hili and Khatunganj also said that the wholesale price of onion increased by Tk10 and Tk5 respectively.
Earlier, the plant quarantine office of the agriculture ministry stopped issuing import orders.
For this reason, import of the onions from India stopped through the Hili land port of Dinajpur.
Stakeholders said that the government stopped importing onions to protect the interest of local farmers.
However, market insiders said while this is a good thing, this initiative should have been taken earlier because most of the farmers who produce onions have sold the cooking ingredient already.
They also said that it is not the farmers, but the traders who will benefit from this sudden stoppage of import.
Onion farmers who have stocks are happy with the news of the stoppage of imports.
In the last week, per maund (37 kg) of onion was sold for Tk900 to Tk1,000, which is being sold at Tk1,300.
A farmer from the Jhitka area of Manikganj said that the farmers will be able to make a healthy profit if the price of onions is Tk1,500 per maund.
However, ordinary buyers from the capital expressed their dissatisfaction with the fresh hike in the onion price.
Rafiqul Islam, a consumer from the Kallyanpur area of Dhaka, said that the price of oil has already gone up, and now if the price of onion goes up again, it will be a burden on the middle-class to feed their families.
“Some small shops already ran out of onions. They are blaming the halt in imports for this. The initiative to protect the interest of the country's farmers is obviously good, but it has to be taken timely,” said a stakeholder.
He also said that the season for onion harvesting is already over and most of the farmers have already sold the onion they produced.
“Stopping imports and raising the prices of onions now means giving middlemen and stockpile traders the opportunity to make an abnormal profit by cutting the pocket of ordinary consumers,” he added.
According to the Directorate of National Consumers' Right Protection, there is no chance of a price hike due to IP closure as the government is not giving new IPs to ensure a fair price for the local farmers.
Moreover, the country has yielded onions as per the demand, so there is no chance of a supply crisis.
According to the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE), farmers of the country grew onions on 2.49 lakh hectares of land across the country in the current fiscal year, down marginally from the previous year. However, the production has increased to nearly 34 lakh tonnes as per the provisional estimates.
