The onion hits upon a century and counting!

Farid Ahmed 

The onion has hit a surprising century and running uncontrollably upward. The heat is really on. It is Tk120 for a kg. It is a rare phenomenon in Bangladesh market, though. The bumpy onion market may last for a while thanks to the Indian supply side, they say. Our business community is apt to blame India for anything if the supplies are from India and quickly pass the blame on to them at the drop of a hat.

Incidentally, this is the peak of the season for onion. And the market caught on ‘fire’ just a fortnight before when India raised the export price of onion to US$ 352 per ton. The price was just within the range of Tk25 to Tk35 in the peak of the season last year. The price has gone up for both indigenous and Indian varieties by about 210 percent. And the onion market is on the hop, skip and jump practices since in a run up to this peak season with no relief in sight.

A news report reveals, the producers of onion in Faridpur have been deprived of a fair share of the bargain  and even they failed to have their cost of production. 

Most surprising side of this price spiral is that both production and import of onion have gone up and the market supply of the onion was 7 lakh metric tons in excess of the total market demand while much to the chagrin of the consumers it’s prices are rocketing to heaven.