TAD News Desk, New Delhi: Importers have been invited by co-operative NAFED to bid on supply of onions to keep in check the supply and demand in the domestic market and take a watchful look at the prices, by November 20.
Bidders have to supply 40-60 mm sized onions with any origin nation at 50/kg by November 20, says the cooperative. The minimum quantity that can be bid upon is 2,000 tonnes which will be supplied in lots of 500 tonnes.
Bidding closes on fourth November and the received bids would open the same day. Shipments would be delivered to Jawaharlal Nehru Port and Kandla ports.
“We have floated tenders for the supply of 15,000 tonnes of imported red onions. This will help increase the domestic supply situation,” Additional Managing Director S K Singh of NAFED, told in a statement to PTI.
Evaluation of bids would be done on the basis of quality, volume and early shipments. Dried, fresh and cured onions are the requirements from the bidders.
The need to open imports for augmenting stocks of onions to intervene in market whenever deems necessary is due to the fact that there has been rapid depletion of the government’s buffer stock managed by NAFED.
Previous year, NAFED had distributed imported onions of state-run MMTC apart from the ones which they imported themselves.
The reason to receive supplies from importers of specified sizes is to augment domestic market conditions with faster delivery of shipments. Big-sized onions which were imported last year had no takers.
Kharif crops have been destroyed due to heavy rains in key-growing states which skyrocketed the onion prices around 80/kg, to counter this surge NAFED intervened through offloading 37,000 tonnes of the 1 lakh tones of buffer stock in select places and retail markets.
Piyush Goyal, minister of commerce and consumer affairs, said on October, 30 that, private traders have already imported 7,000 tonnes of onion and 25,000 tonnes would reach before Diwali.
Government believes the steps taken, ban on exports, setting stock limits on traders – would curb the surge in prices of onions during festival season.
Source –The Economic Times
