As onion prices have crashed more than 50% in a week, Maharashtra’s deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar has written a letter to Union commerce minister Piyush Goyal requesting that the Centre remove the 20% export duty on onions. With the arrival of onions expected to increase significantly in the coming weeks, a push to exports can help arrest the fall in prices, which had hit a five-year high in November due to aberrations of weather. The average wholesale prices at the benchmark Lasalgaon market plunged to Rs 16 per kg on Thursday, down about 55% from Rs 36 per kg a week ago. Onion prices had crossed Rs 60 per kg in wholesale and Rs 80 per kg retail as prolonged excess rainfall had damaged and delayed the kharif crop.In his letter, Pawar said that unseasonal rainfall had caused a dent in the earnings of onion farmers. If they are forced to receive a rate that is lower than the production cost, the farmers will incur huge economic losses, he said. The letter said that the farmers were not able to capitalise on the massive international demand for Maharashtra’s onions.“Removal of the export duty will help to stabilize the prices of the red onion and farmers would get better returns above their cost of production,” Pawar said in a post on X. The newly elected members of the legislative assembly from Nashik had pleaded with Pawar to find a solution to the issue of falling onion prices. The entire onion belt had expressed its anger against the ruling BJP during the Lok Sabha election due to the export restrictions imposed in 2023.On Monday, the Horticulture Produce Exporters Association (HEPA) had met agriculture minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan and raised the demand for removal of export duty in the light of increasing arrival of onions in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. “We have lost our market share to China and Pakistan during the last five years due to frequent changes in onion export policies,” said Vikas Singh, vice president, HEPA. During the campaigning for the recently concluded assembly election in Maharashtra, chief minister Devendra Fadnavis had promised onion farmers that the central government would no longer impose sudden export bans.
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