Admn efforts help bring down prices of veggis

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, March 30

The efforts made by the district administration to streamline the delivery of vegetables, especially allowing sabzi mandi to operate on all days, has resulted in bringing the prices down to quite an extent.

The vegetables were priced extremely high in the city in the past few days. The administration has also released a list of wholesale and retail prices of different vegetables to check overpricing by vegetable vendors.

As per the rate list issued by the market committee, the wholesale and retail prices of tomato were ranging between Rs10 and Rs16 (wholesale) and Rs20 and Rs25 (retail) per kg, respectively. However, in the last few days, it was costing as high as Rs80 to Rs100 per kg.

The prices of pumpkin as per the list are between Rs7 and Rs10 (wholesale) and Rs12 and Rs15 (retail). Astonishingly, it was sold at a high price of Rs100 per kg during the initial three days of lockdown. The price of onion, as fixed in the list, is Rs10 to Rs22 (wholesale) and Rs30 to Rs40 (retail).

Even as the difference in wholesale and retail prices of vegetables in normal days was high and consumers had often complained of high prices, it had further increased post lockdown, as a few sellers had started exploiting the need of residents.

“The decision of the administration to fix the rates of different vegetables and making it public will now help residents in reporting incidents of overcharging by vendors. Earlier, they were totally at vendors’ mercy, as they did not know the wholesale prices,” said Supreet Kaur, a resident.