The government is going to construct six storehouses to ensure safe storage of locally-produced onions and to protect the interests of farmers and the people as well. State-owned Trading Corporation of Bangladesh (TCB) will construct these storehouses at a cost of Tk 25 crore at Chattogram, Rangpur and Moulvibazar.
The decision in this regard was taken at an inter-ministerial meeting held on Sunday at the Planning Commission. The recent imposition of ban on onion export by the Indian government has prompted the government to go for constructing storehouses to offset any possible scarcity of onion in the future.
TCB officials informed that warehouses are available for oil, wheat, potato and others crops. But there is no store for onion in the country. As the onion price shot up to Tk 270 per kg, the government is contemplating to build six storehouses across the country, sources at the commerce ministry said.
Commerce secretary Dr Md Jafar Uddin said, the ministry is taking up a project to construct warehouses so that the onion produced by the local farmers can be stored during the harvesting season. At those storehouses, onions can be stored round the year.
“Farmers will not have to sell their produced onions at lower rate and at the same time traders will not be able to raise prices at the end of the season”, he added. TCB secretary Enamul Haque said as TCB has its own land in these three districts, the authority will construct warehouses there.
Onions are largely produced in Pabna, Faridpur, Rajbari, Manikganj, Kusthia, Rajshahi, Jhinaidah, Magura, Meherpur, Madaripur, Shariatpur, Gopalganj, Naraynganj, Dinajpur and Rangpur. According to officials, onions can be stored in two ways-- firstly, storage can be made after purchasing onions directly from farmers and secondly, the government can rent those warehouses to store onions.
Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics showed, the annual demand of onions in the country is 24-25 lakh metric tons. The country produces 18 lakh tonnes annually, and the rest of the quantity needs to be imported to meet the demand. According to planning commission information, as the project cost is less than Tk 50 crore, it will not have to be placed before the ECNEC meeting. Planning Minister MA Mannan will approve the project.
To this end, planning commission member (secretary) Shahin Ahmed Chowdhury said these six new storehouses will help store onions round the year. Farmers will be able to store their onions there. As a result, unscrupulous businessmen will not be able to increase prices of onion.