Thursday, October 24, 2013

Onions and other Vegetable Prices: Hitting the Common Man



These are supply side constraints as hoarders are at the helm to make the prices skyrocket to dizzying heights while the ordinary consumers suffer. You can read my previous article on this subject ‘Lowering food prices for the Common Man’ and the ways to tackle this. Statements in the press and the ministers seems to suggest that we will have to wait for not less than a fortnight for shipment to reach from China, Egypt and other countries. True, all this is a good, but what we lacked is a mechanism to monitor and pass solutions the moment such a price hike is noticed. This mechanism can be done through some emergency measures written in my article. After all it is a perishable commodity and even the hoarders will be at wits end as to what to do with a sudden unexpected dumping of stocks, be it onions or vegetables. They too will not be able to move it at will around the country for there is ………..infrastructure bottlenecks.