Potato, rice prices drop amid supply glut, market shifts
potato and rice have started falling. 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. Prices of potatoes which stood at Rs 36 a kg 20 days ago are now commanding a price of Rs 34 a kg.
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. Arvind Agarwal, general secretary of the Federal Cold Storage Association of India said “New crop from Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh will start arriving shortly. We have huge stocks in our cold storages. That has to be liquidated first. The West Bengal government’s move to stop the inter-state movement of potatoes has forced states like Assam, Odisha, and Bihar to look at
