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Onion price shoots up

Reaz Ahmad
There is no let-up in onion price hike as consumers continue to pay through their noses for this essential commodity particularly at a time when its demand is the highest during the Eid-ul-Azha.
With the latest jump in prices of onion, the government yesterday asked the deputy commissioners of all the 64 districts to monitor and report immediately any artificial jacking up of the prices.
According to a market report of the state-run Trading Corporation of Bangladesh (TCB), prices of onion soared byTk 30 a kg within a week from Tk 75 on October 4 toTk 105 yesterday.
The TCB said around this time last year, onion was selling at Tk 22-35 a kg.
"Local onion is available throughout the country. Besides, traders are importing it from different countries. There is no reason why the prices of onion should rise like this overnight," additional commerce secretary Monoj Kumar Roy told The Daily Star yesterday.
The district administration throughout the country has been instructed to watch out for any ulterior move to raise the prices of onion during the Eid, he said.
Official sources noted that the government has become perplexed by the erratic behaviour of traders. "It appears that everyone out in the market is trying to reap maximum benefits out of a crisis," one of them added.
Surprisingly, the latest price hike of onion took place overnight after the traders reassured the gov-ernment of no more increase in its prices at a stakeholders' meeting on Thursday. Asked about this, General Secretary of Dhaka Mohanagar Krishiponno Amdanikarok Association Khandaker Babul, said, "Imports are on although there are some problems due to a few days' halt in land port activities on the other side of the border [India) due to [Durga] Puja. But traders of locally grown onion took advantage of this and decreased the supply of onion in the hope of making more profits."
Babul said that efforts were on to enhance supply of "hoarded" onion in the market, and its prices would go down before the Eid.
In July-August, prices of onion started going up following reports that bad weather affected production of onion in India, a main source of Bangladesh's onion import. To offset the price hike in domestic market, the TGB initially started selling onion at fair price (Tk 47 a kg) from trucks at designated places and then again at Tk 55 a kg after further price hike in the international market.
There are, however, allegations of TCB dealers not selling the fair price onion in other divisional headquarters except in Dhaka. The DCs have been also
asked to monitor sale of the TCB-supplied onion.
Last month the Washington-based food policy think-tank --International Food Policy Research Institute (Ifpri), reported that the steep rise in onion prices was not just the fallout of supply cut from India, but also an artificial supply shortage created by a nexus of traders.
"The market supply of onion in Bangladesh declined not only because of the reduction in imports from India, but also due to local traders taking advantage of the situation by cutting the supplies of their stored onions to the market in order to make extra profits," it said.
Contacted over the phone, Ifpri representative to Bangladesh Akhter II Ahmed said the TCB should have intervened in the market in a big way to tackle the traders' nexus. Commerce ministry official Monoj Kumar Roy agreed, but added in the same breath that the TCB needed to be strengthened to go the extra miles.
Both Akhter and Monoj also said that "panic buying" by consumers also contributed to the price rise of onion.