Did the government not take the onion crisis seriously?

PUNE: Imports by National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India ( Nafed) could have been one of the ways to tide over the shortage of the onions in the country.

“Despite knowing about the onion shortage in the country, Nafed did not import onions,” said an insider of the onion trade.

On this, a Nafed office bearer said, “As onion is in the open general license, anybody can import onions.”

But according to the association of onion exporters, restrictions on importing fumigated onions made it impossible for the traders to import large quantity of onions.

“We had demanded that the fumigation requirement could be changed for a short duration of about one-and-a-half months to enable more import of onions.

Instead of insisting on fumigation being done at source, we could have fumigated the onions on reaching in India,” said Ajit Shah, president, Onion Exports Association.

Putting onions in the essential commodities list was one of the measures which could have helped control onion prices, said another trade source.