The Department of Consumer Affairs has directed NCCF and NAFED to sell tomatoes at retail price of Rs.50 per kg from 15 August 2023 in view of the decline in tomato prices in the wholesale markets.

The retail sale of tomatoes in Delhi-NCR started on 14 July 2023. Till 13 August 2023, a total of 15 lakh kg of tomato had been procured by the two agencies, which are being continuously disposed of to retail consumers in major consumption centers in the country. These locations include 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 16 July 2023 and then further to Rs 70 per kg from 20 July 2023. The latest reduction to Rs50 per kg will further benefit the consumers.

Over the past few days, NCCF has substantially increased the quantity of tomatoes supplied to 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 sales of tomatoes through the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) platform.

It may be recalled that on the direction of the Department of Consumer Affairs, NCCF and NAFED had commenced the procurement of tomatoes from mandis in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra for simultaneous disposal in major consumption centers where retails prices have recorded maximum increase in last one month.