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No let up in prices of tuhar, urad dal
Despite fresh arrivals, pulses beyond reach
Ruchika M. Khanna
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, May 3
The quintessential dinner dish in most homes, pulses, continues to remain out of reach for the common man. Though the new crop of pulses has arrived and the government too has released pulses in the open market, prices of pigeon pea (tuhar) and urad are still on the boil.

While tuhar is retailing at anything between Rs 80-85 per kg, urad is retailing at Rs 75-80 per kg. Generally, prices come down this time of the year as the rabi crop arrives in markets. For the second successive year now, there has been no let-up in the prices of the two pulses.

Wholesale pulse traders in Delhi informed TNS that the main reason behind these high prices of pulses is a huge gap in the supply and demand. Though India is the largest producer of pulses in the world (having 25 per cent share in global production), there is a shortage of 3-4 million tonnes of pulses in the domestic market. As compared to a production of 14.74 million tonnes of pulses, the demand is 17-18 million tonnes per annum.

The government had allowed agencies like MMTC, STC, PEC and NAFED to import 3.5 million tonnes of pulses last year. “But this has failed to bring down prices. This is mainly because these state agencies imported 5.79 lakh tonnes of pulses, while the remaining quantity was imported by private traders. These traders sold the imported pulses in the open market at high prices. Also, when the MMTC and other state agencies invited tenders for sale of almost 14000 million tonnes imported pulses, these were bought at high rates,” said a wholesale trader in Delhi, requesting anonymity.

There is hope that the prices will come down in a couple of months. Officials in Indian Institute of Pulses Research, Kanpur, informed that during the rabi season, the area under pulses had shown increase as compared to the area under pulses in the last kharif season. “As compared to 102.79 lakh hectares area in kharif season, the area went up to 141.420 lakh hectares in the rabi season. We are expecting the production to be around 105.287 lakh metric tonnes in the rabi season, as compared to 42.16 lakh metric tonnes in the last kharif season. This will marginally fill the gap in demand and supply. This is likely to bring down the pulse prices marginally,” said a senior official at the Institute.