Onion import likely to mark rise

The government is contemplating to add more countries other than India in their list of countries to import onion in a bid to bring down the commodity’s price, said officials.

"We are trying to check the abrupt price hike of onion .... So we are searching countries other than India to increase import of onion," said additional secretary of the commerce ministry Munshi Shafiul Haque.

A state-owned BSS report says, onions prices rose by 79 per cent in one month.

Continuous monitoring along with searching import option under sustainable rate is being considered as the only way to check the price hike of the essential, said another additional secretary of the ministry, Shamima Yasmin, who looks after the price monitoring cell of the ministry.

The fall in onion production due to severe deluge both in Bangladesh and India and international price hike have pushed price of the spice high in the local market, said the commerce ministry sources.

The LC price of per tonne onion was 271 US dollars in September while it rose to 341 US dollars in October this year, according to the foreign exchange policy department of Bangladesh Bank (BB).

Last year the price of per tonne onion was 112 US dollars.

The commerce ministry has a total of 14 monitoring teams which are continuously conducting monitoring across the city so that nobody can take any undue privilege of price hike of the particular commodity, Haque said.

Haque added: "Now the border price of per kilogram Indian onion soared to 45 rupees, so it would not be viable for the importers to import onion form India. We are looking for exporters like Thailand for our importers."

Even a total of 3,060 letters of credit (LCs) was opened between January and October, 2017 for importing around 7,89,389 tonnes of onion, but the LC settlement during this period was 806,000 tonnes, according to the BB sources.

The price of per kilogram onion soared to Tk 85-90 in the city market and the imported onion sold at Tk 70-75.

A month ago, the price of per kg onion was Tk 45-50 while it rose to Tk 80-90 now. The price of per kg onion was Tk 30-35 a year ago and the price increased by 162 per cent in a year and 79 per cent in a month, said TCB.

Regarding the price hike of onion, Mosharraf, an importer of Shayambazar of the city, said the price of onion now rose to 38-40 rupees per kg in India, while it was Tk 8-10 in rupees 20-25 days ago.

Now the wholesale price of per kg local onion is Tk 65-67 and the Indian variety sells at Tk 50-52, Mosharraf added.

Bangladesh produces almost one-third of the local demand of 1.5-1.6 million tonnes of onion and country's 75 per cent onion come from abroad.