NEW DELHI: With tomato prices soaring across the country, the Union government has decided to procure and distribute tomatoes at discounted prices across major cities in a bid to provide temporary relief to consumers.
The Department of Consumer Affairs has directed National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation (NAFED) and National Cooperative Consumers Federation (NCCF) to immediately procure tomatoes from Mandis in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra for simultaneous distribution in major consumption centres where retail prices have surged significantly in the last month.
The discounted price tomatoes will arrive in the Delhi-NCR region by Friday, this week.
Over the last fortnight, tomato prices have seen several-fold increases in retail and wholesale markets in different cities, contributing to the food inflation basket.
The prices in the national capital have risen from Rs 30-50 per kg on June 24 to Rs 100 per kg for the hybrid variety and Rs 150-180 per kg for the desi variety.
LocalCircles, a community social media platform, has surveyed the rising price of tomatoes and consumer behaviours. The survey revealed startling facts. The data from 311 districts of the surveys showed that 75 per cent of households have significantly reduced tomato consumption.
It also revealed that over 7 per cent have stopped buying tomatoes. The government’s decision to sell tomatoes at discounted prices may help households in resuming tomatoes consumption to some extent.
According to traders at Azadpur mandi, the arrival of tomatoes has dropped by 25 per cent of normal arrivals. Food chain giant McDonald’s stores decided not to temporarily use fresh tomatoes in food products like burgers and wraps.
The Southern and Western regions of the country are major producers of tomatoes, contributing around 58 per cent of India's total production. The peak harvesting season of tomatoes occurs from December to February. Unseasonal rain and the outbreak of a leaf curl disease caused by begomoviruses have reduced production. Adverse weather conditions also disrupted temporarily supply chain often leading to spikes in prices. The planting cycle also varies in different states.
The government said the new crop arrivals are expected soon from Maharashtra's Nashik district. Furthermore, additional supply is expected to come from Narayangaon and Aurangabad belt in August, while arrivals from Madhya Pradesh are also expected to start soon. These arrivals may help in cooling down the price of tomatoes in the near future.