Onion procurement lags after system overhaul
A major overhaul of India’s onion procurement system this year slowed government purchases for weeks despite an early start to stock-building, forcing authorities to relax quality specifications and repeatedly raise procurement prices to accelerate buying.
India's government procurement of onions has lagged significantly since a major overhaul of the system began this year, despite an early start to stock-building. This has pushed authorities to relax quality specifications and raise procurement prices repeatedly. As of July 7, the government had only procured around 13,000 tonnes of onions, far short of the 200,000-tonne target.
The slow pace is largely due to changes made to curb irregularities in procurement and storage. Previously, procurement and storage were handled by Nafed and NCCF through local agencies, but storage responsibility was shifted to the Central Warehousing Corporation (CWC) this year. CWC initially enforced strict quality norms, rejecting a large quantity of onions at procurement centers.
This affected procurement, and authorities had to ease the specifications. The government recently raised procurement prices to ₹23.35 per kg, the highest since the overhaul began. Despite the price hike, onion inflation reached 22.5% in July, up from 4.7% in June, indicating significant supply issues.
Written by urgent.news from Hindustan Times's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
