Govt-subsidised tomatoes being availed by only 7% of households: Localcircles survey

The central government intervention to reduce tomato prices has made only a minor impact with 7 percent households buying tomatoes through that channel, a survey has revealed.

Government-subsidised tomatoes are being availed only by 7 percent of Indian households, a survey conducted by Localcircles, a community social media platform, said.

The survey received over 10,000 responses from household consumers located in 304 districts of India. Of these, 46 percent of respondents were from tier 1, 33 percent from tier 2 and 21 percent were from tier 3, 4 and rural districts.

The central government intervention to reduce tomato prices has made a minor impact with 7 percent of households buying tomatoes through that channel, the survey found. However, 82 percent of households are still paying over Rs 100 per kilo for tomatoes, it said.

At least 15 percent of households, which were earlier buying tomatoes, have been unable to afford them.

The wholesale price data also indicated a 30 percent reduction in tomato prices at the wholesale level but the same is yet to translate to price reduction at the retail levels, the survey has revealed.

If the government wants the prices for consumers to stay low, it may have to expand its subsidised tomato sales programme to many more cities and districts and even evaluate the import of tomatoes till the supply situation normalises, the survey read.

The central government has intervened in the markets since July 14 through the National Cooperative Consumers' Federation of India (NCCF) and National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (NAFED) in an attempt to cool down rising tomato prices in several cities, selling the scarce vegetable at a subsidised price of Rs 90 per kilo.

On July 19, the government further slashed prices, to sell tomatoes at a retail price of Rs 70 per kilo from July 20 onwards.

Till July 18, a total of 391 million tonnes of tomatoes had been procured by the two agencies which are being continuously disposed of to the retail consumers in major consumption centres of Delhi-NCR, Rajasthan, UP and Bihar, according to a press statement by the Ministry of Consumer Affairs.