Potato prices likely to be on hot plate till year-end
potato prices will likely continue to pinch Indian households until the new crop comes to the market in December. Tomato prices have fallen by 40% in the past two days at Delhi's Azadpur Mandi, the largest fruit and vegetable wholesale market in Asia, due to increased arrivals from Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab, traders said.
On the contrary, potato traders said prices will firm up further by another 5-10% as untimely rains have affected the tuber crop and because of cold storage owners releasing potatoes in a way so that the stock can meet domestic consumption till the arrival of the new crop.
Trade sources from Uttar Pradesh, the largest producer of potatoes, said the government has already launched a drive to see whether the cold storage facilities in Agra, the centre of the state's potato trade, were hoarding the tuber to jack up prices. «Once the election is over, there will be state-wide monitoring of the movement of potatoes,» one of them said.
Meanwhile, arrival of tomatoes has picked up in the market. Ashok Kaushik, president of the Azadpur Tomato Association, said: «Due to the heatwave, a lot of tomato crop was damaged, which had pushed up the prices. The farmers have again grown the crop and now arrivals have improved from the states like Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab resulting in a plunge in prices by 40%. Depending on the quality, prices at the mandi are hovering around ₹5-15 per kg at the wholesale level. The fall in prices at the retail end will be
