The wholesalers said they will take supplies of the commodity from Rajasthan and Gujarat instead at competitive prices.
As many as 177 truckloads of onion had reached Indian Punjab from Pakistan through the Attari-Wagha border on Tuesday. Each truck carried around 10 tons of onion. However, Chandigarh traders did not accept the commodity and sent it to other places on Thursday, the Indian media reported.
“Pakistani onion was of poor quality. It was wet and unripe. Therefore, we sent two trucks of onion to Himachal Pradesh,” said Balbir Singh, Chairman of the Chandigarh Wholesalers Association.
Most of the onion coming to India is from Sindh province. Singh said “we are expecting more onion to arrive from Rajasthan and Gujarat over the next couple of days. Talks are ongoing with traders there. We are getting very good quality onion at very competitive prices from there.”
“No truck will come from Pakistan on Saturday (Christmas holiday) and Sunday. So we can expect another consignment only on Monday,” Punjab-based importer Rajdeep Uppal said.
“This two-day gap in supply can again push up prices of onion. In fact, prices have also gone up in Pakistani markets as they also have limited stocks,” he said.
In some parts of India, retail prices of onion touched 100 Indian rupees a kg earlier in the week. Following this, Indian traders bought onion from Pakistan.
To cope with the crisis, the Indian government imposed a ban on onion export. One of the export markets for India was UAE, where after the export ban, onion prices shot up from 1.5 dirhams to five dirhams per kg.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 26th, 2010.
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