Onion importers, retailers play at will on bare patch

The volume of big onion, a highly perishable, seasonal cash crop grown mainly in Matale and Anuradhapura, is not enough to fulfil local demand, although there is data to show that large-scale imports do create a situation where supply is far greater than demand.

For decades, local production had not been able to meet more than 40% of the demand, research data from the Hector Kobbekaduwa Agrarian Research and Training Institute show. The bad consequence is a high import bill and a few local traders and retailers habitually gouging extra profit from imports with government support at crucial times, such as cultural festival periods, when prices gallop. Imports are high in March.

Production and the extent cultivated have declined up to 2020 compared with 10 years ago.

In 2019, Sri Lanka spent Rs 15 million on imports of big onion and Rs 19 million in 2020, data show.

In some years, imports have fulfilled more than 70% of the demand in Sri Lanka. The monthly demand is estimated at 20,000 metric tonnes.

In 2020, while the local requirement was 174,704 MT, the supply was 296,344 MT. The surplus was 121,640, according to calculations by Harti research.

Research in 2018 estimated that a Sri Lankan consumes a “modest’’ 15.8 kilos of big onion a year, compared with some neighbouring countries and in the Far East.

Big onion is mostly a Yala crop, where the produce is harvested between August and October, and much of it reaches markets in September and October. The bulk of the produce ends up in the Dambulla Dedicated Economic Centre, where research has found that a commission of Rs 2 is charged for less than Rs 80 per kilo.

Some of the produce is transported to Thambuththegama.

Commercial-scale growers are mainly in Matale, Anuradhapura, the Mahaweli-H region, and Polonnaruwa. In the 11 years to 2020, the average national yield per hectare had fluctuated from a high of 19MT to a low of 13MT, based on data from the agricultural and environment statistics division of the Department of Statistics.