Kitchen staples pinch on weather, disease woes

Prices of sugar, milk, jeera and dhaniya have all increased in the last week while prices of pulses like tur, urad and chana remained firm at elevated levels even after the Centre rolled out price-control measures, they said.

Sugar prices have increased 4.5% in a week in Kolhapur, the sugar bowl of Maharashtra, from Rs 33 per kilogramme to Rs 34.5/kg ex-mill. “The seasonal increase in demand coupled with lower production figures is the reason for increase in sugar prices,” said Abhijit Ghorpade, a sugar trader in Maharashtra.

Prices of pulses like tur, urad and chana have been holding firm as domestic production is lower than consumption, trade insiders said. Prices of imported urad and tur had risen by 5.4% and 3.7%, respectively, in 15 days.

India is meeting the gap between demand and supply through imports. Tur is mainly imported from Africa and Myanmar, while urad is imported from Myanmar.

Prices of chana, too, had increased 3.8% during the same period.

This had prompted the central government to mount efforts to check hoarding in pulses by asking traders, importers and millers to declare their stock holding position. However, market sources told ET this has not helped in increasing the arrivals of pulses.”After the government order about stock declaration, prices of tur and urad have softened by ₹2-3/kg,” a pulses trader from east India said on condition of anonymity. “However, the fall in prices is only on paper as no one is ready to sell at this level,” the person said.

Industry veterans do not expect much respite in pulses prices as the import of African tur, the next available crop in the international market, will come only in July, while urad prices are firm at origin in Myanmar.

India is also facing an acute shortage of milk and milk products due to fall in local production caused by lumpy skin disease in cattle and higher exports of milk powder and dairy fat in the past, industry insiders said.

Milk prices have increased 15-17% in the last 15 months, while there is a severe storage of dairy fat like butter and ghee.