The central government’s step to impose a minimum export price (MEP) on onion has shown an immediate impact of price correction in Maharashtra markets, an official statement said on Monday.

After this decision, an immediate impact was seen in Maharashtra markets as the prices recorded a decline of 5 per cent to 9 per cent from the highest price registered during last week.

“The weighted average price of onion in Maharashtra across all the markets has declined by 4.5 per cent and a similar decline was observed in consumption centers as well,” the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution said in the statement.

The ministry is monitoring onion exports and prices on a daily basis to ensure stable domestic prices and availability to consumers.

In view of increasing demand in the month of November, the ministry has started releasing onion buffer stock into the market both through mandi sale and discounted sale to retail consumers at centers of high prices.

This includes retail sale through 685 mobile retail outlets covering over 170 cities, it added.

NAFED and NCCF have also started procuring additional 2 LMT onion of kharif harvest to be distributed in high price centers to keep the onion prices under control and protect consumer interest.

The ministry on Saturday notified that along with the decision to impose MEP on onion exports, the government has also announced the procurement of additional 2 lakh tons of onion for the buffer, over and above the 5 lakh tons already procured.

Onion from the buffer has been disposed continuously from the second week of August in major consumption centres all over the country, and also supplied to retail consumers at Rs 25 per kg through mobile vans operated by National Cooperative Consumers’ Federation of India Limited (NCCF) and National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Ltd (NAFED).

While announcing the MEP, the government said the measure has been taken to maintain sufficient availability of onion to domestic consumers at affordable prices as the quantity of stored rabi 2023 onion is declining by curbing the quantity of onion exports.