The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Chilli price crashes again

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Apr 29, 2004

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Chilli price crashes again

y Ramesh Susarla

GUNTUR, APRIL 28. Two days after the final phase of polling in the State, chilli prices touched the lowest of the season with the `model' (average) price per quintal offered by the traders coming down to Rs.1,700 and the highest price for best variety falling to Rs. 2,100 on Wednesday.

While arrivals at the market continued to be normal at 53,000 bags on Wednesday, the abundance of supply due to bumper crop, lack of space in cold storages and temporary halting of purchases by the A.P. Markfed at Guntur to clear the stocks at the market yard to safer places led to the lowering of prices by traders.

The A.P. Markfed is offering Rs. 2,700 per quintal, about Rs. 1,000 more than traders. It had purchased 1.55 lakh tikkis since March 4 when the Market Intervention Scheme-2004 was launched in Guntur and Sattenapalli. Though the payments have been made to those farmers who had handed over their stocks till April 7, the growers were prepared to wait for some more time.

The A.P. Markfed has so far disbursed Rs.18.93 crores for 70,072 quintals and on April 23, it received another Rs.10 crores from the State Government to continue the purchases till May 30.

The Agriculture Marketing Department, which expects one crore bags (tikkis) of chillies to arrive both at the market yard for trading and cold storages, has already received 88.25 lakh tikkis as on date. All the cold storages in and around Guntur have got filled to their capacity (50 lakh bags) with another estimated 12 lakh tikkis remaining with farmers.

The market yard had so far received 38.25 lakh bags in the current season compared to 19.05 lakhs in 2000-01; 19.28 lakhs in 2001-02; and 21.29 lakhs in 2002-03.

The A.P. Markfed Managing Director, G. Srinivas, visited the purchase counter at Guntur on Tuesday and ordered suspension of the purchases for three days from Wednesday as it was finding it difficult to find cold storages. Chillies were being purchased from only 150 farmers a day with a maximum sealing of 20 quintals per farmer per season. The purchases would resume on May 4.

The Joint Director Marketing, Raja Hussain, told The Hindu that the Markfed was temporarily storing its stocks in the warehouse at Guntur, but as and when it was finding space in cold storages, it was shifting them to Nellore, Tadepalligudem, Hyderabad and Mahbubabad in Warangal district.

At the Sattenapalli Markfed purchase counter, there was none to receive the stocks on Wednesday, which led to staging of a rasta roko by farmers for about an hour. The police and market yard officials clarified to the farmers that purchase was suspended only in Guntur and the rasta roko ended. The counter was, however, opened at 2 p.m. instead of the scheduled 9 a.m.

Farmers storing their produce in cold storages had been resorting to stuffing bags with more than 60 kg against the normal 35 kg to save on the rentals calculated per bag (tikki), which according to Mr. Hussain would lead to discolouration of chillies as those in the centre of the bag would not receive cold air to keep the temperature low.

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