Key Points
Having remained firm for the last three months, prices of potatoes have fallen by 8 per cent in the last 20 days as the cold storages in Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal are overloaded with potatoes which need to be used up before November...
Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee in the third week of July had stopped inter-state movement of potatoes and didn't even allow truck movement carrying potatoes from Uttar Pradesh to the north-eastern states resulting in oversupply and prices falling..
Even though Mamata Banerjee on last Tuesday allowed inter-state trade of potatoes for the next seven days on the consideration that there will be no shortage of the tuber for the state and the prices will not rise, the potato trade in Uttar Pradesh said that the sudden decision to stop movement of potatoes has disrupted the supply chain...
Potato traders of UP said that 50 per cent of their total production of 163 lakh tonnes is still lying in cold storages and it is expected that prices will fall further in the coming weeks..
Prices of basmati rice at the retail end have fallen to Rs 60 per kg from Rs 75 per kg in last three months as the export market is not strong enough since other countries have penetrated global markets offering rice at a lower price compared to India, said Suraj Agarwal, CEO of RiceVilla, a rice exporting and marketing company, India has fixed the minimum export price of basmati rice at $950 per tonne..
