The Department of Consumer Affairs has directed NCCF and NAFED to sell tomatoes at retail price of Rs.50/- per kg from 15th August, 2023 in view of the decline in tomato prices in the wholesale markets.
The retail sale of tomatoes in Delhi-NCR had started from 14th July, 2023. Till 13th August, 2023 a total of 15 lakh kg of tomato had been procured by the two agencies which are being continuously disposed of to the retail consumers in major consumption centres in the country. These locations includes Delhi-NCR, Rajasthan (Jaipur, Kota), Uttar Pradesh (Lucknow, Kanpur, Varanasi, Prayagraj) and Bihar (Patna, Muzaffarpur, Arrah, Buxar).
The retail price of tomatoes procured by NCCF and NAFED was initially fixed at Rs.90/- per kg and later reduced to Rs.80/- per kg from 16th July, 2023 and then further to Rs.70/- per kg from 20.07.2023. The latest reduction to Rs.50/- per kg will further benefit the consumers.
Over the past few days, NCCF had substantially increased the quantity of tomato supplied to the retail consumers by stationing its mobile vans across 70 locations all over Delhi, and 15 locations in Noida and Greater Noida. In addition, NCCF is also continuously doing retail sale of tomato through the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) platform.
It may be recalled that on the direction of Department of Consumer Affairs, NCCF and NAFED had commenced the procurement of tomato from mandis in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra for simultaneous disposal in major consumption centres where retails prices have recorded maximum increase in last one month.