By: LakshmiPS
Bangladeshi housewife Tarannum Sobnom cut the amount of onions consumed by her family by half last month as the price of the essential vegetable tripled in early October.
The South Asian nation has been hit by a mini-crisis since last month as prices of one of the key ingredients of local cuisine spiked after India imposed a ban on onion exports in late September, citing a supply shortage.
“Usually we buy onion at 30 taka ($0.35) per kilogram. But at the start of October, the sellers were asking for 75 taka for each kilogram. I bought just five kilograms initially because I thought the price would come down,” said Sobnom, who manages a family of six.
The state-run Trading Corporation of Bangladesh (TCB) is also selling onions at a discounted 45 taka per kilogramme in the capital Dhaka.
But in the city of 18 million, only about 9,000 people — limited to two kilogrammes per person — are allowed to buy the vegetable at the subsidised rate each day.
Restaurants also decided to chop the bulb from their menus.
The price of onions is a sensitive subject in the country, where shortages can trigger widespread discontent with political ramifications.
About two-thirds of the demand for onions — an essential ingredient in Bangladeshi cuisine — is grown locally by farmers, with the rest mostly imported from neighbouring India, where heavy monsoon rains have reduced the crop.
“I don’t know why you stopped onion (exports). So what I did was, I told my cook to not to use onion in food…Prior notice of such decisions would help. Suddenly, you stopped and it became a difficulty for us. In future, if you are taking such a decision, prior information would help,” Prime Minister Sheik Hasina said while addressing an India-Bangladesh Business Forum in New Delhi last month.
(With Reuters and AFP inputs)
