Hili, the country's second land port, is running again after the Durga Puja holiday. On the first day of imports and exports, truckload after truckload of onions has been entering from India. But a shortage of buyers at the port, the withdrawal of import duty on onions and excessive heat have started to push prices down. Within a week, onion prices have fallen by Tk 8 a kg. Even so, importers are in trouble because there are no buyers at the port.

At the onion point inside Hili land port, Indian trucks loaded with neatly stacked onions stood waiting, with few buyers around. One or two wholesalers are coming, but they are not buying either because onions are not selling at the wholesale markets. Onions that sold for Tk 48-50 a kg before the Puja holiday are now selling for Tk 40-42, down Tk 8 a kg.

Saddam, a wholesaler who came to buy onions at Hili land port, said: "Before the Puja, onion imports through Hili were huge. We bought onions here and sent them to various parts of the country. Because they could not sell those onions, they are not placing new orders, so we cannot buy onions either. Meanwhile the government has withdrawn the duty, and prices will fall further."

Harun ur Rashid Harun, president of the Hili land port import-export group, said prices have started falling because the government withdrew the duty on onion imports and because excessive heat has kept buyers away from the port.

According to Hili customs, 474 tonnes of onions were imported from India through Hili land port on 18 trucks on the first working day.

Source: Dainik Sokaler Somoy. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.