India yesterday imposed a minimum export price of $800 per tonne for onions -- much higher than the prices at which importers were buying.

The export price will remain effective until December 31 this year, said a notification issued by India's Directorate General of Foreign Trade. The move is apparently to discourage exports and contain the price in the Indian market.

Importers were quoting $150-$205 per tonne of Indian onions before the minimum export price was imposed, said Dipankar Ghosh, organising secretary of the Clearing and Forwarding Agents Association in Bhomra, a land port in the southwest region bordering India.

Import price will increase by over four times, and landing price of the bulbs will be over Tk 100 a kg at the port, he said.

The curb on export by the Indian authority comes two and a half months after it slapped 40 percent duty on the export of onions to tame escalating prices in its domestic market.

The move is likely to fuel price hike of onions in Bangladesh, which meets a portion of its demand through imports from mostly India.

Dipankar said the wholesale price of onions jumped to nearly Tk 100 a kg at the land port yesterday evening from around Tk 80 per kg.

Yesterday, consumers in Dhaka had to buy a kg of locally grown onion for as much as Tk 105 and imported onion for up to Tk 85, according to market price data by the Trading Corporation of Bangladesh (TCB).

Retail price of onions in Dhaka was 21 percent higher from a month ago, and 90 percent higher year on year from Tk 50-55 a kg, showed the TCB data, although the government claims about good harvest of the bulbs.

In Dinajpur, the price of onions soared due to supply shortfall resulting from a seven-day suspension of trade on the occasion of Durga Puja, and the problems in opening letters of credit (LCs), reports our correspondent there.