2 central co-ops to sell tomatoes at Rs 50 per kg

The Centre on Monday directed cooperatives NCCF and NAFED to sell tomatoes at a reduced rate of Rs 50 per kilogram from Tuesday in view of the decline in prices in the wholesale markets.

Since July, both NCCF and NAFED have been selling tomatoes at a discounted rate on behalf of the consumer affairs ministry in Delhi-NCR, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Bihar to boost domestic availability and contain price rise.

Initially, the ministry had asked the two cooperatives to sell tomatoes at a subsidised rate of Rs 90 per kg and later reduced the price to Rs 80 per kg. Further, the price was cut to Rs 70 per kg.

"The latest reduction to Rs 50 per kg will further benefit the consumers," the ministry said in a statement.

So far, a total of 15 lakh kg of tomatoes have been procured by the two cooperatives which are being continuously disposed of to the retail consumers in major consumption centres in the country.

These locations include Delhi-NCR, Rajasthan (Jaipur, Kota), Uttar Pradesh (Lucknow, Kanpur, Varanasi, Prayagraj) and Bihar (Patna, Muzaffarpur, Arrah, Buxar).

Over the past few days, National Cooperative Consumers' Federation of India (NCCF) had  substantially increased the quantity of tomatoes supplied to the retail consumers by stationing its mobile vans across 70 locations all over Delhi, and 15 locations in Noida and Greater Noida.

In addition, NCCF is doing retail sale of tomatoes through the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) platform.

NCCF and National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Ltd(NAFED) are procuring tomatoes from mandis in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra for simultaneous disposal in major consumption centres where retails prices have recorded the maximum increase in last one month.

As per the data maintained by the ministry, the all-India average price of tomatoes has declined to Rs 9,195 per quintal in Monday from Rs 9,671 per quintal on July 14.

The prices of tomatoes have come under pressure due to heavy rains in the key producing centres that has resulted in supply issues.