Bangladesh will not import onions from India any more, says Commerce Minister Tipu Munshi.
"Last year's export ban without any notice was a lesson for us, which prompted the government to boost local production by providing incentives to farmers," he said on Saturday (Jan 25) while speaking to the media at his Rangpur residence.
The Rangpur-4 MP assured there would be no crisis of soybean oil and sugar in the Ramadan, adding, “We have initiated measures to triple import of soybean oil.”
According to him, locally produced sugar is enough to meet the demand in Ramadan.
Prices of onions skyrocketed in Bangladesh since India banned its export of onions in September last year with immediate effect. Onion prices crossed Tk 250 a kg in local markets.
Bangladesh is much dependent on India to import onions.
India exported 2.2 million tonnes of fresh onions in the 2018-19 fiscal year that ended on Mar 30, according to a Reuters report.
During the same time, Bangladesh imported 578,111 tonnes of the kitchen staple from India, according to data compiled by India’s Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority.
In a bid to tackle the crisis, the government started open market sales across the country and imported onions from Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan and Myanmar.
Bangladesh consumes a higher quantity of onions than the country produces annually.
According to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, the country's onion production in 2016-17 fiscal was 1.86 million tonne against the demand for 2.4 million tonne.
In August last year, the commerce ministry said that the country had 1.6 million tonnes of onions in stock and claimed that the quantity was good enough to meet the local demand.
Bangladesh is eighth on the Food and Agricultural Organization's (FAO) list of top ten countries producing onion.
China tops the FAO list with annual production of 24.28 million tonne, followed by India 22.42 million tonne, USA 3.73 million tonne, Iran 2.37 million tonne, Egypt 2.37 million tonne, Russian Federation 2.13 million tonne, Turkey 2.13 million tonne, Bangladesh 1.86 million tonne, Pakistan 1.83 million tonne and The Netherlands 1.77 million tonne.