Government reduces tomato prices, to sell at Rs 50 per kg from August 15

NEW DELHI, AUG 14 : The central government on Monday directed the National Cooperative Consumers Federation (NCCF) and the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation (NAFED) to sell tomatoes at a retail price of Rs 50 per kg from 15th August. The Department of Consumer Affairs took the decision in view of the decline in tomato prices in the wholesale markets.

NCCF and NAFED sell tomatoes in Delhi-NCR, Jaipur and Kota in Rajasthan, Lucknow, Kanpur, Varanasi and Prayagraj in Uttar Pradesh and Patna, Muzaffarpur, Arrah and Buxar in Bihar.

The retail sale of tomatoes in Delhi-NCR started on July 24 as the government stepped in to address the soaring prices. NCCF has been running mobile tomato shops in 70 locations across Delhi and 15 locations in Noida and Greater Noida.

The retail price of tomatoes procured by NCCF and NAFED was initially fixed at Rs 90 per kg and later reduced to Rs 80 per kg. It was further reduced to Rs 70 per kg from July 20. Besides, the agency is also doing retail sale of tomatoes through the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) platform.

Following the direction of the Department of Consumer Affairs, the NCCF and NAFED started procuring tomatoes from markets in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra for retail sale in consumption centres, which saw a steep surge in prices.

Till 13 August, the NCCF and NAFED agencies procured a total of 15 lakh kg of tomatoes.

-PTI