Despite meetings chaired by ministers, Chief Secretary and other Secretaries and committees formed by the departments concerned to monitor the prices of essentials such as vegetables, fruits and groceries in the wake of lockdown being enforced to prevent the spread of coronavirus, the prices of all such items, including perishable and durables, is on the rise, quietly.
Although the prices of vegetables and fruits in the supermarkets have gone up compared to the price during the week-end, their prices have gone up sharply in the street-corner shops and at other street vendors after the Janata Curfew on Sunday. Even the villages are not spared from the steep price rise of vegetables.
The price of green chilli even in the street-corner shops which was in the range of ₹30 to ₹40 per kg against ₹20 in rythu bazaars last week, has gone up to around ₹100 a kg at street vendors. Even the price of tomatoes which was less than ₹10 a kg in rythu bazaars has gone up in the street-corner shops to around ₹60 to ₹80 a kg, although it is around ₹20 in some super markets.
“Except tomatoes and onions, prices of all other vegetables even in the super markets is nothing less than ₹80 a kg now,” an IT employee J. Manohar said when asked about his experience on price rise following the COVID-19 lockdown. Another IT employee G. Siva Darshan said the price of tomato in the Erragadda Rythu Bazaar was ₹30 a kg on Tuesday but that of green chilli was ₹80.
However, the Agriculture Marketing Department officials have a different story as they stated that the arrivals of fresh vegetables into the three major vegetable markets at Bowenpally, L.B. Nagar and Gudimalkapur on Tuesday was over three times higher than the arrivals on Monday. According to them, the arrivals were nearly 25,000 quintals on Tuesday against nearly 8,000 quintals on Monday. The arrivals on March 24 last year into the three markets were nearly 20,000 quintals.
The prices of groceries has not gone up yet in the super markets and online platforms such as Grofers and BigBasket, but it has been on the rise in street-corner shops.
