Tomato Price in Delhi: Get ready to cough up Rs 200 a kilo for tomato soon | Delhi News – Times of India

NEW DELHI: The retail price of tomato is likely to shoot beyond Rs 200 per kilo, an all-time high, due to a prolonged shortage in producer states.

Vegetable wholesalers said the kitchen essential was auctioned for Rs 4,100 for a crate of 25 kilos in Uttarakhand on Monday. With commission paid to the mandi authorities, transportation to bring the stock to Delhi and profit added to it, the wholesale price in Delhi’s mandis is likely to exceed Rs 5,000 per crate.

Sardar Tony Singh, a vegetable wholesale merchant at Keshopur Mandi who purchased tomatoes for Rs 4,100 per crate from Vikas Nagar in Uttarakhand’s Dehradun district, said he has never witnessed such high prices in his life.
“The prices this year have broken all previous records. Tomato in this season is generally auctioned for Rs 1,200-1,400 for 25 kilos. I have not seen such high prices in my entire life,” he said.
The price of tomatoes started moving northwards in June. The wholesalers attributed the sudden surge to less production and loss of the crop due to heavy rain in some states. It is currently selling for Rs 150-180 a kilo in the retail market. Several fast-food chains have removed tomato from their products and restaurants have temporarily removed its soup from the menus.

To provide relief to consumers, the central government subsidised it and started selling tomatoes from nearly 500 centres for Rs 90 a kilo and later reduced it further to Rs 80.
Vegetable Traders’ Association general secretary Anil Malhotra said Delhi gets its supply of tomatoes from Uttarakhand, Haryana, Karnataka and Maharashtra. He said there was a bumper crop of tomato in 2020 and 2021 and the farmers had to dump their produce since the transportation cost was much higher than the prices they were getting. Even in February and March, farmers suffered losses due to the price crash.
“That’s why the farmers in Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and other parts of the country cut down on the production of tomato this year and produced different kinds of flowers,” Malhotra said.
Due to less production and constant demand, the prices have spiralled upwards.
While Azadpur Mandi used to get about 500 tonnes of tomato every day, the arrival came down to 350-400 tonnes in July. On Monday, the mandi barely got 137 tonnes of tomato from Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Karnataka and Maharashtra together.
“It seems the prices will continue to remain high this month and may start softening only in the first week of September when we will get more from Maharashtra,” Malhotra said.
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