Soaring onion prices: Indian traders begin importing stocks from Pakistan

The Indian government, facing public anger over the cost of onions, Tuesday warned that prices would remain high in coming weeks as traders began importing stocks from Pakistan. The price of onions - a staple of Indian cooking - has more than doubled in the past few days to 80 rupees a kilogram (88 cents a pound) in many markets across the country.
The increases have prompted Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Tuesday to express "deep concern" and call for measures to bring onion prices down, the Press Trust of India (PTI) reported. "The prime minister desires that all necessary steps (be taken) to effectively deal with the extraordinary price rise of onions and bring the prices down to an affordable level," PTI quoted an unnamed official as saying.
The government, which is battling to curb inflation, has banned the export of onions but Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar has warned the prices will nevertheless remain high during the holiday season. Pawar blamed the increase on "unseasonal rains" in the onion-growing region of Nasik in western India. "Our expectation is that with the arrival of (onions) from Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh states in the next two-three weeks, prices will come down," he said.
Traders in the northern border city of Amritsar imported 48 truckloads of the vegetable from nearby Pakistan in the past 24 hours to try to meet India's demand, a trader said. "We are receiving trucks carrying onion from Pakistan in bulk," Rajdeep Singh Uppal, chairman of the privately run Narain trading firm told AFP in Amritsar.
He said Pakistani onions cost 20 rupees a kilogram. The price of onions is a sensitive political issue in India with voters in 1998 throwing out the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Delhi state polls due to its inability to control soaring prices for the commodity. Delhi state Congress Party chief minister Sheila Dikshit Tuesday ordered officials to raid alleged hoarders in the capital, which consumes 300 tons of onions a day. Annual food price inflation in India has come down from a peak of 20 percent but is still high at 9.46 percent.