DECODED! Why onion prices are soaring despite ban on exports

Despite ban on the exports, the onion price in India is continuously climbing. In retail vegetable markets, onion prices have shot up near 50 per cent even after a ban on exports was imposed. Onion price today is Rs 60 per kg while it was Rs 40 per kg when ban was imposed on onion exports on 14th September 2020. During this period, the wholesale price of onion too shot up from Rs 3,500 per quintal to Rs 4,000 per quintal.

According to an exclusive report by Zee Business reporter Vishwamohan, this rise in onion prices is because of various reasons — rising demand for onion and demand-supply constraints. They said that at this time of year onion prices do go up and hence it should not be taken as an exception. Onion prices were bound to go up during this period and they shot up as expected. In fact, the ban on exports has helped to keep onion prices under control otherwise it would have further scaled northwards.

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Vishwamohan reports that, apart from this, new crop of onion is late by around one month. This has also done the damage to the measures aiming to control onion prices. Due to the one-month delay in new onion crop, the market is unable to bridge the demand-supply constraint and hence price is not coming down.