'These episodes are short lived': RBI's 'Five Facts' on rising tomato prices in India

livemint.com:

₹40 for an average duration of 2.6 fortnights whereas prices remain below ₹20 for an average duration of 10 fortnights. While the yearly peaks have exhibited a general increase, the troughs have remained largely constant, indicating that prices do not ratchet up across spells.

Empirical estimates show that even though margins (the wedge between wholesale and retail prices) respond to shocks, their elasticity to wholesale prices is low – for a one per cent rise in wholesale prices, the wedge increases by 0.1 per cent.17 Thus margins act as a shock absorbing mechanism and, therefore, inflation in retail prices is less volatile than wholesale. Spillovers from tomato price spikes to prices of other commodities and unhinging inflation expectations remain a major concern.

Increasing amplitudes of price spells over the years calls for improving the supply chains to contain overall inflation volatility. In recent weeks, the price of tomatoes has soared to up to ₹250 per kilogram, mainly due to crop damage.