The Centre on Wednesday convened an emergency meeting of top ranking officials led by the Department of Consumer Affairs to consider measures to arrest the spiralling prices of tur (arhar) and urad dals that form an essential part of menu in almost every household in the country. Tur is selling between Rs.80 and Rs.150 a kilogram in retail markets in north India while urad hovers around Rs.120 a kg in Delhi markets.
Struggling with a shortfall in supplies following a 10 per cent decline in pulses production last year, the government has decided to import another 2,000 tonnes of tur dal, in addition to 3,250 tonnes that has already arrived at various ports. Fresh stocks of domestic tur will arrive towards the end of the year.
With the festival season round the corner, the government decided to sell imported tur dal from its Safal and Kendriya Bhandar outlets.
The crisis appears to be more in the availability of tur and urad dals as total pulses production dipped to 17.2 million tonnes last year against 19.25 million tonnes in the previous year. Normally India imports up to 3.5 million tonnes of pulses to augment supplies but this year it is looking for another two million tonnes from Myanmar, Malawi and Mozambique.
The problem is that these sources have almost exhausted the surpluses that they can export as they also suffered shortfalls in production last year due to similar weather conditions that affected India.
The Kendriya Bhandar will lift tur dal from MMTC at Mumbai and supply at its 100 locations in Delhi, while Safal will sell the dal through its 300 outlets. This will augment availability and help contain prices in parts of north India.
So far 3,250 tonnes of imported tur dal has arrived at Chennai and Mumbai ports while another tranche is expected to land soon. For now, the MMTC (Minerals and Metals Trading Corporation) has enough stocks to supply in Delhi and neighbouring states, sources said.
The MMTC will import an additional quantity of 2,000 tonnes of tur dal to augment supplies and moderate prices of pulses, official sources said.
The government drew comfort from the first advance estimates of kharif production that showed pulses output at 5.56 million tonnes, which is slightly higher than the production in the corresponding period last year.
The Centre is keeping its fingers crossed for kharif pulses output to match at least last year’s levels. Apart from that there is optimism about pulses sowing having exceeded last year’s levels in kharif due to higher MSP announced by the government.
